About us

Most people don’t like to talk about age, but we’re proud of ours! Just two years before the United States celebrated its first centennial, ADT was founded, not as a security company, but as a telegraph company. Surprising – we know! The American District Telegraph Company was in the business of providing a great service to its customers, just as it is nearly 140 years later as ADT.

Before leading the way in the electronic security industry and moving headquarters to Florida, we began in Baltimore, MD, embracing the most advanced communications technology of the 1800s. While they didn’t have instant messaging back then, they had something similar. A telegraph system! This form of communication was more popular than carrier pigeons in the 1870s because it was faster and more reliable. A hand-written message was provided to a telegraph company from the sender. These messages were transmitted over telegraph lines to a receiving telegraph company at another location. They then decoded, transcribed, and hand delivered the message to the recipient.