Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sheraton Hotels got its name from a lighted rooftop sign that already read "Hotel Sheraton" on the third hotel Ernest Henderson and Robert Moore acquired, in Boston in 1939. Changing the sign was too expensive, so the founders decided to call all their hotels by that name. The original name was probably a reference to furniture designer Thomas Sheraton.
Sheraton dates its founding to 1937, when Henderson and Moore purchased the Stonehaven Hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts, operating it through their newly formed Standard Equities Corporation. The Continental Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, purchased in 1933, was the very first property the pair acquired.
Sheraton Hotels and Resorts is owned by Marriott International, which acquired it as part of its 2016 purchase of Starwood Hotels. Before Starwood, the chain was owned by ITT Corporation, which bought it in 1968.
As of 2024, Sheraton operates 431 properties with 150,640 rooms globally. The chain has locations in North America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Asia-Pacific, and the Caribbean and Latin America.
Reservatron, introduced by Sheraton in 1958, was the hotel industry's first automatic electronic reservations system. It made Sheraton the first hotel chain to centralize and computerize its reservations. An upgraded version, Reservatron II, followed in 1967.
The Sheraton Corporation of America became the first hotel chain to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 1947. It was formed in 1946 through the merger of Standard Equities Corporation with the United States Realty and Improvement Corporation.