Automatic Electric Company ( A.E. Co. ) was an American telephone equipment supplier primarily for independent telephone companies in North America, but also had a worldwide presence. With its line of automatic telephone exchanges, it was also a long-term supplier of switching equipment to the Bell System , starting in 1919. The company was the largest manufacturing unit of the Automatic Electric Group. In 1955, the company was acquired by General Telephone and Electronics (GT&E). After numerous reorganization within GTE, the company's assets came under the umbrella of Lucent in the 1990s, and subsequently part of Nokia .
22-616: In 1889, Almon Strowger , of Kansas City, Missouri, was inspired by the idea of manufacturing automatic telephone exchanges that would not require switchboard operators. He founded the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company in 1891, which held the first patents for the automatic telephone exchange. In 1901, with the construction of a new company manufacturing plant at Morgan and Van Buren Streets in West Chicago, Strowger helped form
44-618: A manufacturing facility in Genoa, Illinois , from Leich Electric , and, in 1978, opened a research and development branch in Phoenix, Arizona . In the mid-1960s, a manufacturing plant was built in Huntsville, Alabama . Public coin-operated telephones and the Styleline series of consumer telephones were manufactured there. A smaller rental telephone refurbishment operation was also moved to
66-633: A product range which included sidelines ranging from Xcel heating appliances to traffic signals. In the 1950s, two Automatic Electric factories were manufacturing in Europe : Automatique Electric SA of Antwerp , Belgium , and Autelco Mediterranea SATAP of Milan , Italy . As its principal product line, Automatic Electric manufactured automatic stepping switches (specifically, " Strowger switches ") which had enabled Strowger's vision. These switches allowed customers to connect their own calls without operator assistance. Automatic Electric's rotary dial makes
88-477: A result, Automatic Electric became a long-term supplier of step-by-step switching equipment to the Bell System for installations where the large-scale Panel system was not economical. General Telephone and Electronics (GT&E) acquired Automatic Electric through a merger with Theodore Gary & Company in 1955, and continued operating the unit into the 1980s. Lenkurt, a manufacturer of carrier equipment,
110-494: A single clicking sound as it is released but is otherwise fairly silent, while Western Electric's rotary dial has a distinctive whirring sound as the dial returns to the normal position. Many Automatic Electric telephones use a distinctive dual-gong ringer, the low and high tones of which are a perfect fifth apart, in contrast to the typical third interval of most Western Electric ringers. The GTD-5 EAX , GTE Automatic Electric's digital class 4 / 5 central office telephone switch,
132-552: The Automatic Electric Company of Chicago. The precursor company The Telegraph Manufacturing Company dated from 1884, and was based in Helsby , Cheshire. The instrument and telephone manufacturing section moved to Liverpool in 1892, with premises off Renshaw Street, and in 1908 expanded by moving to a new site at Edge Lane, a former residential area on the outskirts of Liverpool. The British telephone system
154-681: The Bell Telephone Company . The first exchange was to be called BLAckfriars, to serve the densely telephoned district south and west of St Paul's Cathedral. But the company chairman Sir Alexander Roger pointed out to the GPO Secretary Sir Evelyn Murray (a relation, and also Scottish) the dangers of this proposal, which Parliament would not sanction in a time of much unemployment in Britain, and which would also adversely affect British export potential. So
176-644: The Automatic Electric Company to which he leased his patents exclusively. Automatic switches based on the Strowger system proliferated in independent telephone companies in the 1910s and 1920s, well before the Bell System started deployment of Panel switch technology in the 1910s. In 1919, the Bell System was impacted considerably by organized operator strikes and the leadership abandoned its rejection of automatic switching equipment. As
198-684: The Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company (ATM)) was a British telephone exchange manufacturer established in 1911. After several name changes and acquisitions, the company was merged into Plessey in 1961. The company was reorganised in November 1911 by the cable manufacturer BICC , to make the Strowger system of automatic telephone exchanges (called "Step-by-Step" or SXS in Britain), under licence from
220-609: The Huntsville plant in the 1970s. The plant was closed in the mid-1980s as domestic labour and production costs rose sharply against overseas competitors. In Canada, Automatic Electric acquired Phillips Electric Works, a cable factory in Brockville, Ontario , in 1930. Telephones were manufactured at that facility from 1935 to 1953, when Automatic Electric sold the cable plant and built a 33-acre, $ 1.5 million telephone factory at 100 Strowger Boulevard. The Strowger Boulevard factory
242-565: The Strowger system under licence from the Automatic Electric Company of Chicago. The first maker of automatic exchanges in the UK, this company (as of 1923) was one of four (later five) which manufactured equipment for Post Office-owned central offices ; see General Post Office (GPO or BPO, a government department).. The company became part of International Automatic Telephone Co. in 1920, which changed name to Automatic Electric Co. in 1932 and then to Automatic Telephone and Electric Co. in 1936 to reflect
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#1732779757072264-690: The assets of the Western Electric Company, Automatic Electric's former rival and Bell System counterpart. With the corporate establishment of the Automatic Electric Company in 1901, the facilities of the Automatic Electric Company were located in a six-story complex erected at the intersection of Morgan Street and Van Buren Street in the western part of Chicago. In 1957, Automatic Electric was relocated to Northlake, Illinois , and maintained research and development facilities in Melrose Park and Elmhurst , Illinois. The company acquired
286-589: The basic SXS system was not suitable for London and other large British cities; London was served by 80 local exchanges in the 1920s and would have to comprise a mixture of manual and automatic exchanges for some years. The Western Electric Company , part of the American Bell System , proposed either the panel system used in New York or the rotary system to be manufactured initially in Antwerp by
308-538: The company developed the director telephone system , with the director serving the same function as the register in either of the Western Electric systems, so that the routing of the local call was independent of the number dialled. The format for London numbers was retained, i.e. the exchange name (which could be spoken or dialled using letters on the dial) followed by four digits, e.g. HOLborn 4020. According to legend, some circuit details were worked out in
330-582: The dining car on the train from Liverpool to or from conferences in London, on the backs of old envelopes or on L.M.S. menu cards. In 1922 the GPO Engineer-in-Chief Colonel Purves recommended its adoption for London, as the first cost would be lower than the panel system and the equipment was similar to exchanges already installed. The first director exchange, Holburn, (made by ATM) was cut over in London on 12 November 1927, and
352-669: The loop" (ATM) rather than one conductor to earth (Siemens), although subscriber meter registration was by a "booster" battery (Siemens) as this was more reliable than an electro-polarized relay (ATM). ATM obtained several overseas contracts for SXS exchanges, such as in 1920 for Buenos Aires , operated by the United River Plate Telephone Company. Other contracts for ATM were for several Indian cities (Amritsar, Lahore and Simla), Harbin, and Dairen (Manchuria). GEC also won overseas contracts for New Delhi (India), Jerusalem and Haifa (Palestine), and China,
374-527: The system was subsequently installed in other large British cities. Manufacture was spread over several British firms, with patents pooled; initially ATM plus Siemens , the General Electric Company (GEC) and Standard Telephones and Cables (STC), the local arm of Western Electric. Ericsson Telephones was added to the bulk supply agreement in 1927. Several design features were to be common, e.g. impulses over junction circuits were "round
396-663: The then popular 6502 microprocessor, was sold to California Micro Devices in 1987. In 1989, the remaining assets of the company were placed into a joint venture between AT&T and GTE called AG Communication Systems (the A and G respectively standing for the partners' names). At the same time, GTE Communications systems spun off their interconnect business to a joint venture called Fujitsu GTE, later to be renamed as Fujitsu Business Communication Systems, Inc. AG Communication Systems ceased separate existence in 2004, and became fully incorporated into Lucent , subsequently Alcatel-Lucent and then Nokia . Alcatel-Lucent also owned many of
418-552: Was first deployed on June 26, 1982. Almon Strowger Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.237 via cp1104 cp1104, Varnish XID 211225034 Upstream caches: cp1104 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:42:37 GMT Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company The Automatic Telephone and Electric Company (originally
440-536: Was operated at that time by a Government department, the General Post Office (GPO or BPO), which installed several makes of automatic exchanges in the 1910s, including ATE SXS exchanges at Epsom (1912), followed soon after by the Official Switch (for internal GPO use), and another at Leeds (1919). The SXS system was adopted for small and medium-sized British installations in 1923. However,
462-416: Was purchased by GT&E in 1959, and held separately from Automatic Electric. In 1983, GTE merged Automatic Electric and Lenkurt into GTE Network Systems, which was quickly renamed GTE Communication Systems when AT&T announced the renaming of Western Electric as AT&T Network Systems. GTE Microcircuits, the microelectronics division of GTE Communication Systems known for its G65SC12 CMOS version of
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#1732779757072484-559: Was sold to BC Tel (as Microtel) in 1979, then was owned by Nortel (as Brock Telecom) from 1990 to 1999; it closed in 2002. The Phillips Cables factory closed in the 1990s and was later demolished. In England, the Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Company Ltd. operated a manufacturing plant in Liverpool . British Insulated Cables had founded the company in November 1911 to manufacture
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