On an early morning in May 1848, 10 men representing six New York City newspapers sat around an office table of the New York Sun. They had been in session for more than an hour and all that time they had been in stubborn argument.

At issue was the costly collection of news by telegraphy. The newly invented telegraph made transmission of news possible by wire but at costs so high that the resources of any single paper would be strained.

David Hale of the Journal of Commerce argued that only a joint effort between New York's papers could make telegraphy affordable and effectively prevent telegraph companies from interfering in the newsgathering process. To get news from the west and from abroad, Hale argued, newspapers had to work together if the public was to be served with increasingly wider coverage of the United States and the world.

Although reluctant at first, the six highly competitive papers agreed to the historic plan, and The Associated Press was born.

Today, that six-newspaper cooperative is an organization serving more than 1,500 newspapers and 5,000 broadcast outlets in the United States. Abroad, AP services are printed and broadcast in 112 countries.

Worldwide, the AP serves more than 15,000 news organizations.