September 19, 2003
Pacific Bell was formed in 1880. The company changed it''s name to Pacific Telephone and Telegraph in 1889.
I hired on with Pacific Telephone and Telegraph in 1970. That was the nation-wide Bell System. As a technician in the my Step-by-Step I had end-to-end responsibility on any trouble originating in my machine. If a customer in Gardena, California had trouble calling family in New York I would fix that trouble -- even if it meant tracking it down to a bad trunk in New York. Those were the 'Good Old Days.' We were Family.
The breakup of the Bell System mandated a name change, and in 1984 we became Pacific Bell, a part of the Pacific Telesis Group. Remember the ads, 'Telesis mean progress intelligently planned'? We were no longer allowed to use the Bell Logo, and adopted what came to be known as the 
Splat.
We also lost end to end responsibility, and worse, end to end control. I was no longer allowed to track troubles down. It was 'Not My Job.'
On April Fool's Day, 1997, Pacific Telesis was acquired by SBC. They called it a 'merger.' They didn't fool many people.
In 2001 SBC took the axe to the Pacific Bell name. Our trucks started getting re-branded. In the picture you can see the evilution from Pacific Bell, a member of the Pacific Telesis Group, to SBC Pacific Bell with the original font and the familiar splat, to SBC Pacific Bell with a new font and no splat, to my truck with no mention of Pacific Bell whatsoever.