When that shop was closed down, Shawk bought some of the equipment and went into business for himself, making various kinds of electrical and other apparatus, including inventor's models.

To raise the $400 her son needed for his share of the business venture, Barton's widowed mother mortgaged her home.

In May 1869, Elisha Gray, an Oberlin College professor and inventor of telegraphic equipment, bought out Shawk's interest.

He had invented a needle annunciator for hotels and elevators, a telautograph (a machine for the electrical transmission of writing), and the telegraph answer-back call box.

He offered to enter the business as an equal partner with Gray and Barton, providing the company's headquarters was moved from Cleveland to Chicago, Illinois.

Although the young firm thrived in the telegraph industry, it was not until the invention of the telephone by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, and the incandescent lamp by Thomas Alva Edison in 1879, that Western Electric began to gain stature as a large company.

Part-owner Gray held the title of company electrician and spent his days working on his inventions, becoming increasingly less involved in the operations of the shop, and eventually he sold his interest in Western Electric in 1875 and retired to pursue independent research and to teach at Oberlin College.

[5] It also manufactured arc lamps, lighting equipment and power apparatus, ranging from small fans to huge motors and generators.

A chain of warehouses was established across the nation, and the growth of the distributing business continued to increase through World War I and into the post-war period.

Having become the largest merchandizer of electrical supplies in the world and close to fifty distributing houses in the United States,[4] the division was incorporated as a separate entity on December 11, 1925 with the name Graybar Electric Company, in honor of Western's original founders, Elisha Gray and Enos Barton.

Also that year, the remaining outstanding shares of stock were purchased from Western Electric with a $1 million check signed by Graybar President Frank A. Ketcham.

When the country entered World War II, Graybar's ingenuity and knowledge of logistics proved to be of immeasurable value in providing war-needed goods.

Overall the company enjoyed strong growth in the years following World War II, its momentum not checked until the recession of the mid-1970s, which led to Graybar slashing its workforce by 20%.

As a result, when economic conditions improved in the 1980s Graybar was unable to gear up quickly enough to meet the rising demand for electrical products.

Graybar modernized its infrastructure with one of the first computer-to-computer ordering systems; however, a weak real estate market led to a slowdown in construction and affected the company’s bottom line.

[10] In 1995, Graybar formed the Solutions Providers Alliance with wholesale distributors Kaman Industrial Technologies, WWR Scientific Products, and Vallen Corporation.

[11] Then, in 1997, the company acquired Harris & Roome Supply Ltd. when it became majority stakeholder after having purchased an interest 6 years prior.

[16] In 2002, Graybar acquired Frank A. Blesso, Inc.,[11] and selected SAP America’s mySap.com e-business platform to run its business systems applications.

[22] The company distributes electrical, communications, and data networking products and related supply chain management and logistics services, and has a growing industrial automation platform.