Automatic Electric

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.

In 1919, the Bell System was impacted considerably by organized operator strikes and the leadership abandoned its rejection of automatic switching equipment.

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.

[2] In 1989, the remaining 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).

The company acquired a manufacturing facility in Genoa, Illinois, from Leich Electric, and, in 1978, opened a research and development branch in Phoenix, Arizona.

[5] The Strowger Boulevard factory was sold to BC Tel (as Microtel) in 1979, then was owned by Nortel (as Brock Telecom) from 1990 to 1999; it closed in 2002.

The GTD-5 EAX, GTE Automatic Electric's digital class 4/5 central office telephone switch, was first deployed on June 26, 1982.