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.GTE Automatic Electric (1955) ''This is Automatic Electric--Pioneers in Communication Techniques'' In 1955, the company was acquired by General Telephone and Electronics (GT&E). After numerous reorganization within GTE, the companies assets it came under the umbrella of

Lucent Lucent Technologies, Inc. was an American Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications equipment company headquartered in Murray Hill, New Jersey, Murray Hill, New Jersey. It was established on September 30, 1996, through the dives ...

in the 1990s, and subsequently part of

Nokia Nokia Corporation (natively Nokia Oyj, referred to as Nokia) is a Finnish multinational telecommunications, information technology, and consumer electronics corporation, established in 1865. Nokia's main headquarters are in Espoo, Finlan ...

History

In 1889, Almon Strowger, of Kansas City, Missouri, was inspired by the idea of manufacturing automatic

telephone exchange telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syste ...

s that would not require switchboard operators. He founded the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company in 1891, which held the first

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling disclo ...

s 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 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 The Panel Machine Switching System is a type of automatic telephone exchange for urban service that was used in the Bell System in the United States for seven decades. The first semi-mechanical types of this design were installed in 1915 in Newark ...

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 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 Theodore Gary & Company was a 20th-century independent telephone firm in the United States. Among its subsidiaries was the Associated Telephone and Telegraph Company, which controlled telephone companies in Latin America and telephone manufacturin ...

in 1955, and continued operating the unit into the 1980s. Lenkurt, a manufacturer of carrier equipment, 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 AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile tel ...

announced the renaming of

Western Electric The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of American Telephone & Telegraph for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment ma ...

as AT&T Network Systems. In 1989, the 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

, subsequently

Alcatel-Lucent Alcatel–Lucent S.A. () was a French–American global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U.S.-based Lucent, the latter being a su ...

and then

. Alcatel-Lucent also owned many of the assets of the Western Electric Company, Automatic Electric's former rival and Bell System counterpart.

Facilities

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 Elmhurst may refer to: Places Australia *Elmhurst, Victoria United Kingdom * Elmhurst, Aylesbury *Elmhurst, Staffordshire United States *Elmhurst, Sacramento, California *Elmhurst, Oakland, California *Elmhurst, Delaware *Elmhurst, Illinois *Elmhu ...

, Illinois. The company acquired a manufacturing facility in Genoa, Illinois, from

Leich Electric Leich Electric was a manufacturing company of telecommunications equipment in the United States. Leich produced telephone sets, switchboards, telephone exchange equipment, and associated tools and materials for the independent telephone market in ...

, and, in 1978, opened a research and development branch in

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ; nv, Hoozdo; es, Fénix or , yuf-x-wal, Banyà:nyuwá) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona, with 1,608,139 residents as of 2020. It is the fifth-most populous city in the United States, and the o ...

. In the mid-1960s, a manufacturing plant was built in

Huntsville, Alabama Huntsville is a city in Madison County, Limestone County, and Morgan County, Alabama, United States. It is the county seat of Madison County. Located in the Appalachian region of northern Alabama, Huntsville is the most populous city in th ...

. Public coin-operated telephones and the ''Styleline'' series of consumer telephones were manufactured there. A smaller rental telephone refurbishment operation was also moved to 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 Brockville, formerly Elizabethtown, is a city in Eastern Ontario, Canada, in the Thousand Islands region. Although it is the seat of the United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, it is politically independent of the county. It is included wit ...

, 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 was sold to

BC Tel British Columbia Telephone Company and later BC Tel was the legal operating name for the telephone company operating throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada. For most of its history, BC Tel served as one of several regional monopolies ...

(as Microtel) in 1979, then was owned by

Nortel Nortel Networks Corporation (Nortel), formerly Northern Telecom Limited, was a Canadian Multinational corporation, multinational telecommunications and data networking equipment manufacturer headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. It was foun ...

(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 Liverpool is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the List of English districts by population, 10th largest English district by population and its E ...

. British Insulated Cables had founded the company in November 1911 to manufacture 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 telephone exchange, telephone switch, or central office is a telecommunications system used in the public switched telephone network (PSTN) or in large enterprises. It interconnects telephone subscriber lines or virtual circuits of digital syste ...

; see

General Post Office The General Post Office (GPO) was the state mail, postal system and telecommunications carrier of the United Kingdom until 1969. Before the Acts of Union 1707, it was the postal system of the Kingdom of England, established by Charles II of En ...

(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 a product range which included sidelines ranging from Xcel heating appliances to traffic signals.Automatic Telephone Manufacturing Co history
/ref> In the 1950s, two Automatic Electric factories were manufacturing in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located enti ...

: Automatique Electric SA of Antwerp,

Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...

, and Autelco Mediterranea SATAP of

Milan Milan ( , , Lombard language, Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the List of cities in Italy, second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

Products

As its principal product line, Automatic Electric manufactured automatic

stepping switch In electrical control engineering, a stepping switch or stepping relay, also known as a uniselector, is an electromechanical device that switches an input signal path to one of several possible output paths, directed by a train of electrical puls ...

es (specifically, "

Strowger switch The Strowger switch is the first commercially successful electromechanical stepping switch telephone exchange system. It was developed by the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company founded in 1891 by Almon Brown Strowger. Because of it ...

es") which had enabled Strowger's vision. These switches allowed customers to connect their own calls without operator assistance. Automatic Electric's

rotary dial A rotary dial is a component of a telephone or a telephone switchboard that implements a signaling technology in telecommunications known as pulse dialing. It is used when initiating a telephone call to transmit the destination telephone number ...

makes 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 In music theory, a perfect fifth is the musical interval corresponding to a pair of pitches with a frequency ratio of 3:2, or very nearly so. In classical music from Western culture, a fifth is the interval from the first to the last of five ...

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, was first deployed on June 26, 1982.

References

{{reflist 1901 establishments in Illinois 1983 disestablishments in Illinois Technology companies established in 1901 Technology companies disestablished in 1983 Defunct companies based in Chicago Manufacturing companies based in Chicago Defunct telecommunications companies of the United States Telecommunications companies established in 1901 Manufacturing companies established in 1901 American companies established in 1901 American companies disestablished in 1983