Automatic Electric Company was a telephone equipment supplier for independent phone companies similar in many ways to the Bell System's Western Electric. The Bell System is an informal name given to the US telecommunications company American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) before AT&T divested its local exchange telephone service operating companies on January 1, 1984. ... Western Electric (sometimes abbreviated WECo) was a US electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1984 . ...

A precursor to the company was founded in the 1891 by Almon Strowger who was inspired by the idea of manufacturing automatic telephone exchanges that would not require operators. His company, the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company, held patents for equipment and leased them exclusively to Automatic Electric, which he helped form. 1891 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... Almon Brown Strowger (1839 – May 26, 1902) gave his name to the electromechanical telephone exchange technology that his invention and patent inspired. ... In the field of telecommunications, a telephone exchange (US: telephone switch) is a piece of equipment that connects phone calls. ... A patent is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state to a person for a fixed period of time in exchange for the regulated, public disclosure of certain details of a device, method, process or substance (known as an invention) which is new, inventive and useful. ...

Among other equipment, Automatic Electric manufactured automatic stepping switches (or "Strowger switches") which enabled Strowger's vision. These switches allowed customers to connect their own calls without operator assistance. Because AT&Ts Bell System used Western Electric equipment exclusively, automatic switches proliferated in independent exchange carriers in the 1920s, well before the Bell System adopted similar technology. In electrical controls, a stepping switch (also called a uniselector; see Strowger switch, below) is an electromechanical device used, most prominently, in early automatic telephone exchanges to route calls. ... AT&T (formerly an abbreviation for American Telephone and Telegraph) Corporation NYSE: T is an American telecommunications company. ... Sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or primarily in North America as the Roaring Twenties. // Events and trends Technology John T. Thompson invents Thompson submachine gun, also known as Tommy gun John Logie Baird invents the first working mechanical television system (1925) Charles Lindbergh becomes the first person to...

The most notable independent was General Telephone (GTE). GTE bought Automatic Electric outright in 1955, and it continued operating into the 1980s. Categories: Corporation stubs | Communications companies of the United States | Defunct companies | Telephone companies | Public Utilities ... 1955 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... // Events and trends The 1980s marked an abrupt shift towards more conservative lifestyles after the momentous cultural revolutions which took place in the 1960s and 1970s and the definition of the AIDS virus in 1981. ...

In the days before touch tone dialing, the company's rotary dial phones had a distinctive buzzing sound as the dial returned to the stop position. Consumers who were used to the more common (and quieter) Western Electric phones found in the major cities were often annoyed by the noise it made. Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF), also known as Touch Tone is used for telephone signaling over the line in the voice frequency band to the call switching center. ... The rotary dial is a device mounted on or in a telephone or switchboard that is designed to send interrupted electrical pulses, known as pulse dialing, corresponding to the number dialled. ...

In 1989, the assets of the company were placed into a joint venture between AT&T and GTE called AG Communications Systems (the A and G respectively standing for the partners' names). Ironically, this company is now controlled by Lucent Technologies. Lucent also owns many of the assets of the Western Electric Company, Automatic Electric's former rival and Bell counterpart. 1989 is a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar. ... In 1996, AT&T spun off its Systems and Technology units (including Western Electric), along with the famous Bell Laboratories, to form a new company named Lucent Technologies NYSE: LU, under the leadership of Henry Schacht, who was brought in to oversee the transition of Lucent from an arm of...

External links

• AG Communications Systems