Editing Automatic Electric (section)

==History==
In 1889, [[Almon Strowger]], of Kansas City, Missouri, was inspired by the idea of manufacturing automatic [[telephone exchange]]s that would not require switchboard operators. He founded the '''Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company''' in 1891, which held the first [[patent]]s for the automatic telephone exchange. In 1901, with the construction of a new company manufacturing plant at Morgan and Van Buren Streets in West Chicago, Strowger helped form the Automatic Electric Company to which he leased his patents exclusively.

Automatic switches based on the Strowger system proliferated in independent telephone companies in the 1910s and 1920s, well before the [[Bell System]] started deployment of [[Panel switch]] technology in the 1910s. In 1919, the Bell System was impacted considerably by organized operator strikes and the leadership abandoned its rejection of automatic switching equipment. As a result, Automatic Electric became a long-term supplier of step-by-step switching equipment to the Bell System for installations where the large-scale Panel system was not economical.

[[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. Lenkurt, a manufacturer of carrier equipment, was purchased by GT&E in 1959, and held separately from Automatic Electric.

In 1983, GTE merged Automatic Electric and Lenkurt into GTE Network Systems, which was quickly renamed GTE Communication Systems when [[AT&T]] announced the renaming of [[Western Electric]] as AT&T Network Systems. GTE Microcircuits, the microelectronics division of GTE Communication Systems known for its G65SC12 CMOS version of the then popular [[MOS Technology 6502|6502]] microprocessor, was sold to [[California Micro Devices]] in 1987.<ref>{{cite web |title=A Decade of Semiconductor Companies |url=http://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2013/04/102723194-05-01-acc.pdf |publisher=Dataquest |date=1988 |page=136 |accessdate=2024-04-28}}</ref> 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). At the same time, GTE Communications systems spun off their interconnect business to a joint venture called Fujitsu GTE, later to be renamed as Fujitsu Business Communication Systems, Inc. AG Communication Systems ceased separate existence in 2004, and became fully incorporated into [[Lucent]], subsequently [[Alcatel-Lucent]] and then [[Nokia]]. Alcatel-Lucent also owned many of the assets of the Western Electric Company, Automatic Electric's former rival and Bell System counterpart.