The Automatic Electric Co (maker of telephone equipment) was listed as being at

1033 W. Van Buren St, Chicago 7. But later ads simply said Northlake IL 60164,

no street address given.

Would you know where the Northlake location was and if anything remains there of the company?

Thanks.


Railroad note: Many railroads and transit systems purchased an AE PAX for internal use; some could be quite large with thousands of stations. Likewise, so did some large industrial works. These systems were usually not inter-connected with the "
outside" Bell network, and were owned, not rented. A dispatcher's desk would often have two telephone sets, a Bell set for outside calls, and an AE set for internal calls.



While TCI* has a number of brochures and manuals on Automatic Electric, it is generally tough to find any historical information about them, especially on the war years and 1960s-1970s. They did have what appears to be a fascinating line of dial PAXs in
the 1950s of various sizes, more so than what Western Electric offered at he time. (The Phila schools utilized their 32A38 system, which apparently was compact and inexpensive; it offered up to 100 stations but only one channel, ideal for school
buildings where there was light intercom traffic. It fit into a small cabinet.)

* Telephone Collectors International, their library for members has extensive material.

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On Sunday, April 12, 2015 at 8:27:35 PM UTC-4, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Here's the Encyclopedia of Chicago entry...

Thanks!


Ironically, the Budd Company's sprawling railway plant, on Red Lion Road in northeast Phladelphia, was torn down to become a golf course. However, I think

the course went out of business. Haven't been down there in a while. But it was very sad when
the plant* was torn down--the birthplace of so many high quality long lasting stainless steel postwar railroad trains and subway cars. Amfleet, of course, is still running, as are the PATCO and R-32 cars. I think some diners on Amk LD trains are really
old (60 year) Budd built units. A number of RDCs are still running, either still as self propelled units, or as dead coaches.

*Originally built for Budd by the Army to build war planes. Budd bought it after the war and moved its railway division to it.

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From: ahk@chinet.com

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

The Automatic Electric Co (maker of telephone equipment) was listed as
being at 1033 W. Van Buren St, Chicago 7. But later ads simply said >Northlake IL 60164, no street address given.

Would you know where the Northlake location was and if anything remains
there of the company?

Thanks.

Here's the Encyclopedia of Chicago entry: http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2559.html

From a Northlake Web page:

Industries such as Scholle Chemical and Automatic Electric bought
land on the City.s western perimeter. Automatic Electric sat on a
portion of the old Westward Ho Golf Course, located on what is now
Westward Ho Drive and Golfview Drive. The golf course was one of
the country.s premier spots for golf. It ceased operation in 1957.

I'm not spotting an address, but I guess that's not too far from
Proviso Yard.

I never saw the plant.

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The Phila schools utilized their 32A38 system, which apparently was compact and inexpensive; it offered up to 100 stations but only one channel, ideal

for > school buildings where there was light intercom traffic. It fit into a small

cabinet.

Because these systems utilized a rotary Strowger switch, some maintenance was involved, such as annual lubrication, and perhaps some spring adjustment every few years. Strowger switches had a long lifespan. However, the systems also required a
rectifier for power, and I don't know the lifespan or maintenance, if any, of rectifiers built in 1950. Some were "selenium".

Also, some very large schools, such as certain big high schools, may have used a manual cord switchboard instead of a dial system. The big schools might have

had more than 100 telephones and needed more than one channel for communication. A cord board,
though requiring a part-time operator, could provide that economically.


But not to worry--I believe these systems were all replaced in the 1980s or 1990s after a service life of 30-40 years. The new systems, unlike the old, could connect into the outside telephone network. Thus, a teacher wishing to call a parent, could do
so from her classroom instead of needing to go to the school office.

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From: ahk@chinet.com

Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:

hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

The Automatic Electric Co (maker of telephone equipment) was listed as >>being at 1033 W. Van Buren St, Chicago 7. But later ads simply said >>Northlake IL 60164, no street address given.

Would you know where the Northlake location was and if anything remains >>there of the company?

Thanks.

Here's the Encyclopedia of Chicago entry: >http://encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/2559.html

From a Northlake Web page:

Industries such as Scholle Chemical and Automatic Electric bought
land on the City.s western perimeter. Automatic Electric sat on a
portion of the old Westward Ho Golf Course, located on what is now
Westward Ho Drive and Golfview Drive. The golf course was one of
the country.s premier spots for golf. It ceased operation in 1957.

I'm not spotting an address, but I guess that's not too far from
Proviso Yard.

I never saw the plant.

I found an address:

400 N Wolf Rd
Northlake, IL 60164

This would be north and east of Proviso Yard.

I also found two more articles about the gradual winding down of operations
at the plant: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-04-24/business/9002030098_1_layoffs-ag-communication-systems-joint-venture
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1990-04-25/business/9002030352_1_gte-telephone-operations-joint-venture-ag-communication-systems

I didn't recall anything about AG Communications, a joint venture between
AT&T and GTE in 1989, apparently part of a strategy by the manufacturing
arms of both companies to consolidate and shrink manufacturing. This was several years before AT&T spun off what became Lucent. No idea if
Lucent included any former AECO or GTE manufacturing.

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From: lfsheldon@gmail.com

On 4/13/2015 10:47, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:

The Phila schools utilized their 32A38 system, which apparently was
compact and inexpensive; it offered up to 100 stations but only one
channel, ideal for > school buildings where there was light
intercom traffic. It fit into a small cabinet.

Because these systems utilized a rotary Strowger switch, some
maintenance was involved, such as annual lubrication, and perhaps
some spring adjustment every few years. Strowger switches had a long lifespan. However, the systems also required a rectifier for power,
and I don't know the lifespan or maintenance, if any, of rectifiers
built in 1950. Some were "selenium".

Also, some very large schools, such as certain big high schools, may
have used a manual cord switchboard instead of a dial system. The
big schools might have had more than 100 telephones and needed more
than one channel for communication. A cord board, though requiring a part-time operator, could provide that economically.

But not to worry--I believe these systems were all replaced in the
1980s or 1990s after a service life of 30-40 years. The new systems,
unlike the old, could connect into the outside telephone network.
Thus, a teacher wishing to call a parent, could do so from her
classroom instead of needing to go to the school office.

The high school I attended in the 1950s had identical cord boards
sitting side-by-side--one labeled "Automatic Electric", the other
"Western Electric". The offices and such had Pacific Telephone
instruments connected to one cord-board, the same offices plus
department heads and selected (don't know how) othe4r teachers had the
funky, odd sets connected to the other.

The (full time) PBX operator was not supposed to complete calls from one
board to the other, but for certain selected teachers (ibid.) she did.

The high school where my mother worked had just the Pacific Telephone board.

In later years she moved to a brand-new junior high school that had the
neatest arrangement I have seen to date--they had non-bell service so it
was probably AE and it ran on a closet full of Stroweger switches.

The neat thing was that the instruments were all the same, including the
clerk assigned the "PBX" duties. The only visible "PBXish" thing was
that her desk also had a small box with keys and lights (that weren't
touched much--the only one I remember is the "Night Connections"
key--about which mote in a moment.

The neat thing during the day time was that if there was an incoming
call the clerk-assigned answered it. If another call came in while she
was working he first (or if she was away from her desk) somebody else
within ear-shot could dial a digit ("8" I think) and get the next call
in order.

When the "Night Connections" key was operated, all of the phones on
campus would ring and the call could be picked up by dialing the magic
digit.

--
The unique Characteristics of System Administrators:

The fact that they are infallible; and,

The fact that they learn from their mistakes.


Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

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On Monday, April 13, 2015 at 5:52:40 PM UTC-4, Larry Sheldon wrote:

The high school I attended in the 1950s had identical cord boards
sitting side-by-side--one labeled "Automatic Electric", the other
"Western Electric". The offices and such had Pacific Telephone
instruments connected to one cord-board, the same offices plus
department heads and selected (don't know how) othe4r teachers had the
funky, odd sets connected to the other.

The (full time) PBX operator was not supposed to complete calls from one board to the other, but for certain selected teachers (ibid.) she did.

I had seen arrangements where AE and WE switchboards sat side by side, and wondered if they could've been physically interconnected. Now I know.

The govt regulators were very strict about Bell's rental-only policy and no inter-onnected equipment*. Part of it was legitimate concern to protect the network against a homebuilt unit that put house current onto the phone line. But a big part of it
was protecting Bell System rental revenue. Those rentals, especially for business equipment, cross-subsidized the very basic phone service for the poor,

helping to create universal service. That was very important to the regulators

(ref Awl). Bell
liked it too, to help build a large customer base, and for good public relations. Back in the 1960s, bare-bones phone service (which did include a telephone set and all maintenance) cost about $3/month, which was pretty affordable.

* Certain equipment, such as paging systems and dictation machines, could be customer owned by interconnected.


Anyway, for younger readers (if there are any), the deal was that Bell System services and products were rented only. In an organization, this could add up.

So, what many schools and factories did was put Bell phones only in places where the people
would need outside connections. The rest of the organization would be served by a privately owned system, often built by Automatic Electric, but not connected to Bell phones. Obviously, some organizations, perhaps many, "cheated".

So, as Larry described, there would be two switchboards, or someone would have two phones on their desk. AE phones had a funky look to them.

In later years she moved to a brand-new junior high school that had the neatest arrangement I have seen to date--they had non-bell service so it
was probably AE and it ran on a closet full of Stroweger switches.

The beauty of the AE system described above was its economy--since it had only one channel, it needed only one Strowger switch and a few control relays, and fit into a compact cabinet.

When the Phila school district replaced its old AE systems, probably a few collectors were able to save some. It would be neat to have such a system. Some serious collectors have a whole PAX set up in their homes.

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