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.
[Illustration: _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._]
[Illustration: _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.