Automatic Electric Company
| Automatic Electric | |
| Industry | Electronic manufacturing |
| Fate | Merged to GTE Network Systems in 1983 |
| Predecessor | Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company (1891) |
| Successor | Now part of Alcatel-Lucent |
| Founded | Chicago, Illinois (1901) |
| Founder | Almon B. Strowger |
| Defunct | 1983 |
| Headquarters | Chicago, Illinois, United States of America |
|
Area served
|
US, Canada, Europe |
| Products | Telephones and switching equipment |
| Parent | Theodore Gary & Company, later GTE |
Automatic Electric Company (AE) was the largest of the manufacturing units of the Automatic Electric Group. It was a telephone equipment supplier for independent telephone companies in North America, and 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.
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. Subsequently, in 1901, Strowger helped form the Automatic Electric Company to which he leased his patents exclusively.
Automatic switches proliferated in independent telephone companies in the 1910s and 1920s, well before the Bell System started deployment of Panel switch technology in the 1920s. 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.
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, 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. 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 Lucent, now Alcatel-Lucent. Alcatel-Lucent also owns many of the assets of the Western Electric Company, Automatic Electric's former rival and Bell System counterpart.
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