Theodore Newton Vail made his fortune in the telephone and mining business, and was the first president of AT&T.

He lost of a good deal of his fortune in the district heating business, when the Boston Heating Company failed in early 1889. This system used William E. Prall's Superheated water system. Vail was introduced to the Prall system by Samuel M. Bryan.

Vail became president of AT&T in 1909. The first transcontinental telephone call was transmitted by a telephone instrument on January 25, 1915. Mr. Theodore N. Vail, President of AT&T, to Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone in New York. Thomas A. Watson, assistant to Dr. Bell, in San Francisco and President Wilson in Washington, D.C.

The Vail Award, named in memory of Theodore N. Vail, the first president of the former Bell System, is presented to an individual for actions beyond those required in the ordinary pursuit of the job or in emergencies outside the job for acts of unusual bravery or heroism. Only a handful of such awards are presented each year in all of BellSouth's nine southeastern states.

Vail was first president of the Telephone Pioneers of America.

In One Man's Life: Being Chapters from the Personal and Business Career of Theodore N. Vail Albert B. Paine, 1921 New York: Harper

Born - 16 July 1845, Carroll County, Ohio (near Minerva)
Died, 16 April 1920, New York.
Vail had one adopted daughter, Katherine (daughter of his brother, William Alonzo Vail (1849-1904). Katherine married Arthur A. Marsters, secretary of AT&T on 17 December 1913. She was one of the founders of Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont and lived at 117 East 72d Street in New York. She was on 27 May 1977 in Bellevue Hospital at the age of 95.
She was survived by a daughter, Katherine Hurd; two sons, Theodore N. V. and Andrew C.; 14 grandchildren, and nine great-grandchildren. (New York Times, 29 May 1977, p. 28)

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