Western Electric

History

In 1856, George Shawk, purchased an electrical engineering business in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1869, he became partners with Enos N. Barton and, later the same year, sold his share to inventor Elisha Gray. 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 typewriters, alarms and lighting and had a close relationship with the telegraph company Western Union to whom they supplied relays and other equipment.

In 1875, Gray sold his interests to Western Union, including the caveat that he had filed against Alexander Graham Bell's patent application for the telephone. The ensuing legal battle over patent rights, between Western Union and the Bell Telephone Company, ended in 1879 with the former company withdrawing from the telephone market and the latter acquiring Western Electric in 1881.

From this time, well into the 1970s, all telephones and telephone networks in the United States with the exception of a few areas, were owned directly or indirectly by American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T) popularly known as Ma Bell. AT&T was composed of regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs), such as Pacific Telephone and New York Telephone. Other divisions of AT&T and parts of the Bell System included Bell Laboratories (Bell Labs), AT&T Long Lines and Western Electric, the manufacturing arm.

All telephones, all components of the public switched telephone network (PSTN), and all devices connected to the network were made by Western Electric and no other devices were allowed to be connected to the network.

Western Electric telephones were 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 durable in design. In particular, the work of Walter A. Shewhart, who developed new techniques for statistical quality control in the 1920s, helped lead to the legendary quality of manufacture of Western Electric telephones.

AT&T's only serious competitor in providing phone service was General Telephone and Electronics (GTE), which operated its own manufacturing arm, Automatic Electric.

In 1905 the company began construction of the Hawthorne Works on the outskirts of Chicago and which, by 1914 had absorbed all manufacturing work from Clinton Street and Western Electric's other plant in New York.

Western Electric came to an end in 1995 when the American Telephone and Telegraph Company was restructured following an antitrust lawsuit.

Technological innovations

Western Electric innovations included the Princess and Trimline telephones of the 1960s, and the development of touch-tone dialing as a replacement for rotary dialing.

Management innovations

• Western Electric were pioneers of the scientific management of Frederick Winslow Taylor.
• Walter A. Shewhart developed the control chart at the Hawthorne Works in 1924.
• Western Electric was the location of the Hawthorne experiments in industrial productivity from 1924 to 1923.

Legacy

Since the demise of Western Electric, telephones and telephone equipment have been made by numerous manufacturers. As a result of increased competition, modern telephones are now less expensive than were Western Electric models.

Some people never purchased telephones after the AT&T breakup and continue to lease their existing Western Electric models from their RBOC. Such people have paid for their telephones ten times over.

External links

• http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/westernelectric_history.html

Bibliography

• Adams, S B. & Butler, R V (2000) Manufacturing the Future: A History of Western Electric ISBN 0521651182
• Fagen, M D (ed.) (1975) A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: The Early Years (1875-1925)
• Fagen, M D (ed.) (1978) A History of Engineering and Science in the Bell System: National Service in War and Peace (1925-1975) ISBN 0932764002

Referenced By