Western Electric Company (sometimes abbreviated
WE and
WECo) was an
AmericanThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
electrical engineeringElectrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
company, the manufacturing arm of
AT&TAT&T Corp., originally American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American telecommunications company that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. AT&T is the oldest telecommunications company...
from 1881 to 1995. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management. It also served as the purchasing agent for the member companies of the
Bell SystemThe Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...
.
History
In 1856, George Shawk purchased an
electrical engineeringElectrical engineering is a field of engineering that generally deals with the study and application of electricity, electronics and electromagnetism. The field first became an identifiable occupation in the late nineteenth century after commercialization of the electric telegraph and electrical...
business in
Cleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
. In 1869, he became partners with Enos M. Barton and, later the same year, sold his share to inventor
Elisha GrayElisha Gray was an American electrical engineer who co-founded the Western Electric Manufacturing Company...
. In 1872 Barton and Gray moved the business to Clinton Street, Chicago, Illinois and incorporated it as the
Western Electric Manufacturing Company. They manufactured a variety of electrical products including
typewriterA typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
s, alarms, and lighting and had a close relationship with the telegraph company
Western UnionThe Western Union Company is a financial services and communications company based in the United States. Its North American headquarters is in Englewood, Colorado. Up until 2006, Western Union was the best-known U.S...
to whom they supplied relays and other equipment.
In 1875, Gray sold his interests to Western Union, including the
caveatA patent caveat was a legal document filed with the United States Patent Office. Caveats were instituted by the US Patent Act of 1836, but were discontinued in 1909. A caveat was like a patent application with a description of an invention and drawings, but without claims. It was an official...
that he had filed against
Alexander Graham BellAlexander Graham Bell was an eminent scientist, inventor, engineer and innovator who is credited with inventing the first practical telephone....
's
patentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
application for the
telephoneThe telephone , colloquially referred to as a phone, is a telecommunications device that transmits and receives sounds, usually the human voice. Telephones are a point-to-point communication system whose most basic function is to allow two people separated by large distances to talk to each other...
. The ensuing legal battle over
patentA patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
rights, between Western Union and the
Bell Telephone CompanyThe Bell Telephone Company, a common law joint stock company, was organized in Boston, Massachusetts on July 9, 1877 by Alexander Graham Bell's father-in-law Gardiner Greene Hubbard, who also helped organize a sister company — the New England Telephone and Telegraph Company...
, ended in 1879 with Western Union withdrawing from the telephone market and Bell acquiring Western Electric in 1881.
Western Electric Company was the first company to join in a Japanese joint venture with foreign capital. It invested in Nippon Electric Company, Ltd. in 1899. Western Electric held 54% of NEC at the time. Their representative in Japan was
Walter Tenney CarletonWalter Tenney Carleton was an early international businessman. He was one of the three founding directors of NEC Corporation, the first Japanese joint venture with foreign capital.- Youth and education :...
.
A few years later WECO secretly purchased controlling interest in
Kellogg Switchboard & Supply companyKellogg Switchboard & Supply Company was a major manufacturer of telephone exchange equipment. It was founded in Chicago, Illinois, by Milo G. Kellogg, an electrical engineer...
, a principal competitor, but was forced by a lawsuit to sell.
In 1920, Alice Heacock Seidel was the first of Western Electric's female employees to be given permission to stay on after she had married. This set a precedent in the company, which up until that time had not allowed married women in their employ. Miss Heacock had worked for Western Electric for sixteen years before her marriage, and was at the time the highest-paid secretary in the company. From a memoir of her life, she writes that the decision to allow her to stay on "required a meeting of the top executives to decide whether I might remain with the Company, for it established a precedent and a new policy for the Company - that of married women in their employ. If the women at the top were permitted to remain after marriage then all women would expect the same privilege. How far and how fast the policy was expanded is shown by the fact that a few years later women were given maternity leaves with no loss of time on their service records."
In 1925,
IT&TITT Corporation is a global diversified manufacturing company based in the United States. ITT participates in global markets including water and fluids management, defense and security, and motion and flow control...
purchased the Bell Telephone Manufacturing Company of Brussels, Belgium and other worldwide subsidiaries from
AT&TAT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
, to avoid an anti-trust action. The company manufactured rotary system switching equipment under the
Western Electric brand.
Early on, Western Electric also managed a thriving electrical distribution business, furnishing its customers with non-telephone products made by other manufacturers. This electrical distribution business was spun off from Western Electric in 1925 and organized into a separate company,
Graybar Electric CompanyGraybar is a wholesale distribution business, included on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations. Founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1869, the company is currently based in St. Louis, Missouri...
, in honor of the company's founders, Elisha Gray and Enos Barton.
Bell LabsBell Laboratories is the research and development subsidiary of the French-owned Alcatel-Lucent and previously of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company , half-owned through its Western Electric manufacturing subsidiary.Bell Laboratories operates its...
was half-owned by Western Electric.
NASA
In 1960
NASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
awarded Western Electric a contract worth over $33,000,000 for construction and engineering of the Mercury tracking network, and to provide the training of the remote-site flight controllers and Mercury control center operations personnel.
Development of a monopoly
In 1915,
Western Electric Manufacturing was incorporated in New York, New York as a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T, under the name
Western Electric Company, Inc.
All telephones in areas where AT&T subsidiaries provided local service, all components of the
public switched telephone networkThe public switched telephone network is the network of the world's public circuit-switched telephone networks. It consists of telephone lines, fiber optic cables, microwave transmission links, cellular networks, communications satellites, and undersea telephone cables, all inter-connected by...
(PSTN), and all devices connected to the network were made by Western Electric and no other devices were allowed to be connected to AT&T's network. AT&T and Bell System companies were rumored to employ small armies of inspectors to check household line voltage levels to determine if non-leased phones were in use by consumers.
Western Electric-made phones were owned not by individual customers but by local Bell System telephone companies—all of which were in turn owned by AT&T, which also owned Western Electric itself. Each phone was leased from the phone company on a monthly basis by customers who generally paid for their phone and its connection many times over in cumulative lease fees. This monopoly made millions of extra dollars for AT&T and Western Electric, and had the secondary effect of subsidizing telephone service, keeping basic local phone service very low—under $10 per month,
including the leased phone. After divestiture, basic dial tone service went up in price, and the customer was now responsible for all of his building's wiring and telephone equipment, despite the disclaimer permanently molded into the Western Electric-made telephone housings: "Bell System Property—Not For Sale." To increase revenues, the
Bell SystemThe Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...
sometimes refurbished old returned phones, giving them new housings, then leased them for use in new installations. The longevity of Western Electric phone models and the limited number of new designs was a direct result of AT&T and Bell System control of new phone sales in a monopolistic system.
AT&T also strictly enforced policies against buying and using phones by other manufacturers. A customer who insisted on using a phone not supplied by the Bell System had to first transfer the phone to the local Bell monopoly, who leased the purchased phone back to the customer for a monthly charge plus a 're-wiring' fee. In the 1970s, after some consumers began buying phones from other manufacturers anyway, AT&T changed its policy for its
Design Line telephoneDesign Line is a brand that AT&T has used on several of its telephones, also known as Deco-Tel.-Pre-divestiture Design Line:In the early 1970s, before the Bell System divestiture, customers in increasing numbers chose to install and use telephones not manufactured by Western Electric, AT&T's wholly...
series by selling customers the phone's housing, retaining ownership of the mechanical components — which still required paying AT&T a monthly leasing fee.
Until 1983, Western Electric telephones and/or their inner mechanical components could only be leased by subscribers and never sold, and so had to be repaired at no charge if they failed. This led Western Electric to pursue extreme reliability and durability in design in hopes of minimizing service calls. In particular, the work of
Walter A. ShewhartWalter Andrew Shewhart March 18, 1891 - March 11, 1967) was an American physicist, engineer and statistician, sometimes known as the father of statistical quality control.W...
, who developed new techniques for statistical quality control in the 1920s, helped lead to the legendary quality of manufacture of Western Electric telephones. In 1983, Western Electric telephones began being sold to the public through the newly created American Bell subsidiary of AT&T, under the American Bell brand name. One of the terms of the
Modification of Final JudgmentIn United States telecommunication law, Modification of Final Judgment is the August 1982 agreement approved by the court settling United States v. AT&T, a landmark antitrust suit, originally filed on January, 14, 1949 and modifying the previous Final Judgment of January 24, 1956...
that led to the
Bell System divestitureThe Bell System divestiture, or the breakup of AT&T, was initiated by the filing in 1974 by the U.S. Department of Justice of an antitrust lawsuit against AT&T. The case, United States v...
prohibited AT&T from using the Bell name after January 1, 1984; prior to this, AT&T's plan was to market products and services under the American Bell name, accompanied by the now familiar AT&T globe logo.
One of AT&T's integrated rivals in providing phone service within the U.S., General Telephone and Electronics (GTE), also operated an equipment manufacturing arm, Automatic Electric.
In 1905 Western Electric began construction of the
Hawthorne WorksThe Hawthorne Works, in Cicero, Illinois, was a large factory complex built by Western Electric starting in 1905 and operating until 1983. It had 45,000 employees at the height of its operations. Besides telephone equipment, the factory produced a wide variety of consumer products, including...
on the outskirts of
ChicagoChicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
and which, by 1914 had absorbed all manufacturing work from Clinton Street and Western Electric's other plant in
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
. Later large factories included the Kearny Works in
Kearny, New JerseyKearny is a town in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. It was named after Civil War general Philip Kearny. As of the United States 2010 Census, the town population was 40,684. The town is a suburb of the nearby city of Newark....
and Columbus Works in
Columbus, OhioColumbus is the capital of and the largest city in the U.S. state of Ohio. The broader metropolitan area encompasses several counties and is the third largest in Ohio behind those of Cleveland and Cincinnati. Columbus is the third largest city in the American Midwest, and the fifteenth largest city...
.
Technological innovations
In 1928, Western Electric issued the first Bell System telephone with a single handset, having both the transmitter and receiver placed thereon (previous telephones had been of the "
candlestickThe candlestick telephone is a style of telephone that was common from the late 1890s to the 1930s.-History:Also known as a desk stand, upright, or a stick phone, it came with or without a rotary dial, and with a ringer box...
" type). This telephone was known as the B1 or
"102"The Model 102 telephone was Western Electric's first widely distributed telephone set to feature the transmitter and receiver in a common handset. Prior models had been of the "candlestick" type, which featured a transmitter fixed to the base, and a receiver held to the ear...
phone, and had a round base; it was succeeded in 1930 by the D1 or
"202"The Model 202 telephone was a desktop telephone produced by Western Electric from 1930 through 1936. It was a modified version of the Model 102, and contained newly created anti-sidetone circuitry to prevent audio from the earpiece from being picked up by the mouthpiece, which would result in an...
phone, which featured upgraded electronics (
sidetoneSidetone is audible feedback to someone who is speaking. The term is most used in telecommunication contexts.-Telephony:In telephony, sidetone is the effect of sound that is picked up by the telephone's mouthpiece and in real-time introduced at a low level into the earpiece of the same handset,...
suppression) and a more stable oval base.
The next significant upgrade came in 1937 with the introduction of the
"302"The Model 302 telephone subscriber set was manufactured by Western Electric from 1937; manufacture of entirely new units was ceased after the introduction of the Model 500, but Model 302 units were continually remanufactured as such at least until 1958, and as the Model 5302 telephone which was...
phone. Designed by the noted industrial designer
Henry DreyfussHenry Dreyfuss was an American industrial designer.-Career:Dreyfuss was a native of Brooklyn, New York. As one of the celebrity industrial designers of the 1930s and 1940s, Dreyfuss dramatically improved the look, feel, and usability of dozens of consumer products...
, this telephone included the ringer within its rectangular housing; previous models (including the candlestick) had required a separate
bell boxA bell box is an electronic audible device, when activated, makes a chime, bell, or buzzer sound.- Components :The housing for the bell box can be made of wood, metal, and/or plastic. The basic core component of a conventional bell box is an electromagnet and a bell or piece of metal that will make...
called a "
ringer boxThe ringer box is an external phone ringer housed in a bell box or subscriber set, and was used with most early desk stand type phones including the candlestick telephones, and the Western Electric model 102 and 202 telephones, which were too small to hold a ringer or other needed electrical parts...
". The 302 was followed by the
"500"The Western Electric model 500 telephone series was the standard desk-style domestic telephone set issued by the Bell System in North America from late 1949 through the 1984 Bell System divestiture. Millions of model 500-series phones were produced and were present in almost every home in North...
phone, which would become the most extensively-produced telephone model in the industry's history. Initially released in 1949, it was continually updated over time, reflecting new materials and manufacturing processes, such as quieter and smoother dial gearing and a printed circuit board in the "network" (the phone's circuit module). The Model 500 was discontinued in 1986, in favor of a Touch-Tone version that also electronically emulated a rotary dial.
Other innovations included the
PrincessThe Princess Phone was introduced by the Bell System in 1959. It was a compact telephone designed for convenient use in the bedroom, and contained a light-up dial for use as a night-light. It was commonly known with the slogan "It's little...It's lovely...It lights", which was suggested Robert Karl...
telephones of the 1950s and
TrimlineThe Western Electric Trimline telephone is a variety of telephone set designed by Donald Genaro of Henry Dreyfuss Associates for the Bell System . It was built by the Bell System's manufacturing arm, Western Electric. The idea behind the Trimline telephone was to create an alternative telephone...
telephones of the 1960s, and the development of Touch-Tone dialing as a replacement for rotary dialing.
In 1929, Western Electric was also a big player in early cinema sound systems. It created the Western Electric Universal Base, a device by which early silent cinema projectors could be adapted to screen sound films. It also designed a wide-audio-range horn loudspeaker for cinemas. This was estimated to be nearly 50% efficient, thus allowing a cinema to be filled with sound from a 3-watt amplifier. This was an important breakthrough in 1929 because high-powered audio valves were not generally available back then.
In addition to being a supplier for AT&T, Western Electric also played a major role in the development and production of professional
soundSound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
recording and reproducing equipment, including:
- the Vitaphone
Vitaphone was a sound film process used on feature films and nearly 1,000 short subjects produced by Warner Bros. and its sister studio First National from 1926 to 1930. Vitaphone was the last, but most successful, of the sound-on-disc processes...
system which brought sound to the movies;
- the electrical recording technology adopted by record companies in the late 1920s (despite the popular electrical system used by Autograph Records
Autograph Records was a United States record label of the 1920s.Autograph was a small label, owned by Marsh Laboratories Incorporated of Chicago, Illinois. Marsh Laboratories in turn was owned by electrical engineer Orlando R. Marsh...
and its manager, Orlando R. MarshOrlando R. Marsh was an electrical engineer raised in Wilmette, Illinois. In early 1920s Chicago, Illinois he pioneered electrical recording of phonograph discs with microphones when acoustic recording with horns was commonplace...
);
- the Orthophonic
The Victor Orthophonic Victrola first demonstrated publicly in 1925, was the first consumer phonograph designed specifically to play "electrically" recorded disks. The combination was recognized instantly as a major step forward in sound reproduction....
phonograph, an acoustical phonograph with a flat frequency response tailored for reproduction of electrically recorded disks;
- the Westrex optical sound that succeeded it;
- the Westrex cutter and system for recording stereophonic sound in a single-groove gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...
that was compatible with monophonic equipment.
Management innovations
- Western Electric were pioneers of the scientific management
Scientific management, also called Taylorism, was a theory of management that analyzed and synthesized workflows. Its main objective was improving economic efficiency, especially labor productivity. It was one of the earliest attempts to apply science to the engineering of processes and to management...
of Frederick Winslow TaylorFrederick Winslow Taylor was an American mechanical engineer who sought to improve industrial efficiency. He is regarded as the father of scientific management and was one of the first management consultants...
.
- Walter A. Shewhart
Walter Andrew Shewhart March 18, 1891 - March 11, 1967) was an American physicist, engineer and statistician, sometimes known as the father of statistical quality control.W...
developed the control chartControl charts, also known as Shewhart charts or process-behaviour charts, in statistical process control are tools used to determine whether or not a manufacturing or business process is in a state of statistical control.- Overview :...
at the Hawthorne WorksThe Hawthorne Works, in Cicero, Illinois, was a large factory complex built by Western Electric starting in 1905 and operating until 1983. It had 45,000 employees at the height of its operations. Besides telephone equipment, the factory produced a wide variety of consumer products, including...
in 1924.
- The Hawthorne experiments in industrial productivity were conducted there from 1924 to 1936.
- Joseph M. Juran
Joseph Moses Juran was a 20th century management consultant who is principally remembered as an evangelist for quality and quality management, writing several influential books on those subjects. He was the brother of Academy Award winner Nathan H...
pioneered the use of statistical analysis for quality assuranceQuality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...
at the Hawthorne Works.
- Western Electrics' reputation for sound management was such that in 1949 President Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...
requested that Western Electric manage a major defense laboratory, Sandia National Labs.
The end of Western Electric
As of January 1, 1984, the new AT&T Technologies, Inc. assumed the corporate charter of Western Electric, which was then split up into several divisions, each focusing on a particular type of customer (e.g. AT&T Technology Systems, AT&T Network Systems). Telephones made by Western Electric prior to the breakup continued to be manufactured and continued to be marked "Western Electric", with the Bell logo absent, or "hidden" by metal filler inside of all telephone housings and most components, including new electronic integrated circuits with the famous "WE" initials. Electronic Switching Systems, outside plant materials, and other equipment produced for the consumption of the RBOCs continued to be marked "AT&T Western Electric" well into the 1990s.
Cost-cutting measures resulted in the consumer telephones, including the
TrimlineThe Western Electric Trimline telephone is a variety of telephone set designed by Donald Genaro of Henry Dreyfuss Associates for the Bell System . It was built by the Bell System's manufacturing arm, Western Electric. The idea behind the Trimline telephone was to create an alternative telephone...
being redesigned and "modernized" in 1985, as well as more plastic being used in place of metal on the 500 & 2500 series phones, as well as the Princess. In 1986, the
IndianapolisIndianapolis is the capital of the U.S. state of Indiana, and the county seat of Marion County, Indiana. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population is 839,489. It is by far Indiana's largest city and, as of the 2010 U.S...
Works telephone plant closed, and US production of AT&T single line home phones ended. Business telephones and systems continued production in the Shreveport Works plant until 2001. Home telephones were redesigned and production was moved overseas to
Hong KongHong Kong is one of two Special Administrative Regions of the People's Republic of China , the other being Macau. A city-state situated on China's south coast and enclosed by the Pearl River Delta and South China Sea, it is renowned for its expansive skyline and deep natural harbour...
,
SingaporeSingapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
,
ChinaChinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, and
BangkokBangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...
. Western Electric no longer marked housings of telephones with "WE", but continued to mark the
modular plugsModular connector is the name given to a family of electrical connectors originally used in telephone wiring and now used for many other purposes. Many applications that originally used a bulkier, more expensive connector have now migrated to modular connectors...
of telephone cords with "WE".
Western Electric came to a total end in 1995 when
AT&TAT&T Corp., originally American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American telecommunications company that provides voice, video, data, and Internet telecommunications and professional services to businesses, consumers, and government agencies. AT&T is the oldest telecommunications company...
changed the name of AT&T Technologies to
Lucent TechnologiesAlcatel-Lucent USA, Inc., originally Lucent Technologies, Inc. is a French-owned technology company composed of what was formerly AT&T Technologies, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs...
, in preparation for its spinoff. All modular telephone plugs were now marked with "HHE" enclosed in an oval. Lucent would become independent in 1996, and sold/spun off more assets into
Advanced American TelephonesVTech Innovation, L.P., doing business as Advanced American Telephones, is a telephone manufacturing company.-History:American Bell Consumer Products was created on January 1, 1983 as a unit of American Bell, Inc., upon declaration by the Modification of Final Judgment that American Telephone &...
,
Agere SystemsAgere Systems Inc. was an integrated circuit components company based in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Spun out of Lucent Technologies in 2002, Agere was merged into LSI Corporation in 2007....
,
AvayaAvaya Inc. is a privately held computer networking, information technology and telecommunications company that is a global provider of business communications systems. The international head quarters is in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, United States...
, and Consumer Phone Services. Lucent itself merged with
AlcatelAlcatel Mobile Phones is a brand of mobile handsets. It was established in 2004 as a joint venture between Alcatel-Lucent of France and TCL Communication of China....
, forming
Alcatel-LucentAlcatel-Lucent is a global telecommunications corporation, headquartered in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, France. It provides telecommunications solutions to service providers, enterprises, and governments around the world, enabling these customers to deliver voice, data, and video services...
. Western Electric's Structured Cabling unit, once known as AT&T Network Systems or SYSTIMAX, was spun off from
AvayaAvaya Inc. is a privately held computer networking, information technology and telecommunications company that is a global provider of business communications systems. The international head quarters is in Basking Ridge, New Jersey, United States...
and is now part of CommScope.
Legacy
Since the demise of Western Electric, telephones and telephone equipment have been made by numerous manufacturers. As a result of increased
competitionCompetition is a contest between individuals, groups, animals, etc. for territory, a niche, or a location of resources. It arises whenever two and only two strive for a goal which cannot be shared. Competition occurs naturally between living organisms which co-exist in the same environment. For...
, modern telephones are now made in Asia, generally using less expensive components and labor.
Some people never purchased telephones after the AT&T breakup, and continue to lease their existing Western Electric models from QLT Consumer Lease Services (formerly known as AT&T Consumer Lease Services). Such people have paid for their telephones ten or more times over, but the phones are perceived by some users to be superior to telephones commonly made today in aspects of durability and sound quality. Today many of these Western Electric telephones have become collector's items, renowned for their reliability.
Western Electric's audio equipment from the 1920s and 30s designed to be used in movie theaters is now highly prized by collectors and audiophiles due to its high quality construction and sound reproduction. This includes its massive horn loudspeakers designed to fill a large theater with sound from a relatively low powered tube amplifier.
See also
- AT&T
AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications corporation headquartered in Whitacre Tower, Dallas, Texas, United States. It is the largest provider of mobile telephony and fixed telephony in the United States, and is also a provider of broadband and subscription television services...
- Graybar Electric Company
Graybar is a wholesale distribution business, included on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations. Founded in Cleveland, Ohio in 1869, the company is currently based in St. Louis, Missouri...
- Lucent Technologies
Alcatel-Lucent USA, Inc., originally Lucent Technologies, Inc. is a French-owned technology company composed of what was formerly AT&T Technologies, which included Western Electric and Bell Labs...
- Bell System
The Bell System was the American Bell Telephone Company and then, subsequently, AT&T led system which provided telephone services to much of the United States and Canada from 1877 to 1984, at various times as a monopoly. In 1984, the company was broken up into separate companies, by a U.S...
- Reading Works
The Reading Works in Berks County, Pennsylvania was a manufacturer of integrated circuit and optoelectronic equipment for communication and computing. The work force grew to nearly 5,000 by 1985 making the Reading, Pennsylvania, facility one of Berks County's largest industrial employers...
External links