Evolution of an Industry
In the first few years after the telephone was invented, six different manufacturers made telephone apparatus for the Bell companies. Each produced equipment of different design and quality. It quickly became apparent that progress depended upon standardized equipment of the best possible quality.
In 1882, the Bell System purchased the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. This company had grown out of a partnership formed in 1869 by Enos M. Barton and Elisha Gray. It had specialized at first in telegraph and then in telephone equipment. Ownership of Western Electric gave the System assurance of standardized equipment of high quality, reasonable prices, and a dependable source of supply.
A Western Electric installer, one of the members of a nation-wide team, puts the finishing touches on new central office switching equipment installed for a Bell telephone company.
High-powered optical apparatus is needed to maintain the hair-splitting tolerances that are required in making miniature electronic tubes used in communications equipment.
Growing with the System, Western Electric became an enterprise of national stature. Its manufacturing operations are principally in Chicago, Ill., Kearny, N. J., Baltimore, Md., Allentown, Pa., Tonawanda, N. Y., Indianapolis, Ind., and Winston-Salem, N. C.
In the years since World War II the company’s manufacturing facilities have undergone an almost continuous modernization and expansion. In addition to building a number of new factories, the company has rented or purchased other plants to obtain the manufacturing space required for the dual job of furnishing equipment needed by the armed forces and continuing to meet the requirements of the Bell System.