Image and info submitted by hemingray:





Thanks Cliff.

Almost forgot to include the following:

The adaptor is made by Benjamin.

Hmmm..... So was this made for Ma Bell?

I am not sure about Western Electric being diversified but I was reading a book on Northern Electric (before they became Nortel) when they were still owned by Bell Canada and they made a number of non telephone products for consumer sale. Home radio's and home organs are two of the products I remember off the top of my head being in the book.

I guess I should have thought about that a little more. After all, Western Electric also made a lot of sound equipment for the movie industry, didn't it?

Yes, I remember reading an article somewhere talking about refurbishing WE theatrical sound equipment for the then infant Home Theater/audiophile movement.

Indeed, there is still a good market for the old Western Electric theatre sound equipment, I know of a few folks who'll pay top dollar for the old stuff, sometimes regardless of condition!! Mainly audiophiles, no cinemas seem to want it anymore. Too bad, too. A properly aligned W/E mono system will run circles around most of the garbage in cinemas today. The onl thing that would be lacking with the old stuff is the rumbly bottom end.

I had some family near Omaha that worked at Western Electric until the end of the 80's. They made telephone materials. I want to say something with large cables. When the phone companies broke up they had lay offs.
Here's some interesting history of WE sence the 1872: http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/westernelectric_history.html

Just read there that Graybar was a spin off of WE electrical supply department.

The main web page looks like they don't have much going on: http://www.westernelectric.com/

Tom

The Bell System Memorial site, along with
http://www.telephonetribute.com/

has some great information. Highly recommended, but be warned you'll end up reading them for the rest of the day instead of getting any work done!


I found a couple of files a while ago which are taken from a satellite radio technical talk show of a few years ago, and in one of the telephone-related discussions the subject of Graybar came up.

The old-time switchman said that at one time Graybar was the only source of Western Electric telephone equipment for the independent (non-Bell) companies.

There's actually a lot of interesting nostaligic telephone and radio/TV talk on those links. Go to
http://www.centralofficeonline.com/

and you'll find two separate links about halfway down the page (the Tom & Daryll show).

Make sure you have plenty of time though -- Each clip is about an hour and a half!

http://www.graybar.com/aboutus/gbhistory.html