Almon Strowger
| Almon Brown Strowger | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
February 11, 1839 Penfield, New York, United States |
| Died | May 26, 1902 (aged 63) St. Petersburg, Florida, United States |
| Occupation | Inventor |
| Spouse(s) | Susan Strowger |
Almon Brown Strowger (February 11, 1839 in Penfield, New York, United States – May 26, 1902 in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States) gave his name to the electromechanical telephone exchange technology that his invention and patent inspired.
Strowger was born on Penfield, near Rochester, New York. Little information is available about his early life, but it is known that he was the grandson of the second settler and first miller in Penfield. In her history of the Town of Penfield, Katherine Thompson reports that if his mother gave her children a task, he and his brothers would spend most of their time figuring out a machine that would do the task for them. He taught school in Penfield for a time, and served in the 8th New York Volunteer Cavalry during the American Civil War. It is believed that he fought in the Second Battle of Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia.
After the Civil War, it appears he first became a country school teacher before he became an undertaker. He is variously attributed as living in El Dorado, Kansas or Topeka, Kansas, and finally Kansas City, Missouri. It is not clear where his idea of an automatic telephone exchange was originally conceived, but his patent application identifies him as being a resident of Kansas City, Missouri on March 10, 1891.
Convinced that it should be subscribers, rather than the operator, who chose who was called—anecdotally, Strowger's undertaking business was losing clients to a competitor whose telephone-operator wife was intercepting and redirecting everyone who called Strowger—he first conceived his invention in 1888, and patented the automatic telephone exchange in 1891. It is reported that he initially constructed a model of his invention from a round collar box and some straight pins.
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