[rollei_list] Re: old phone numbers
----- Original Message ----- From: Peter K. 
To: rollei_list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Friday, January 23, 2009 7:31 AM
Subject: [rollei_list] Re: old phone numbers
Nope, IT&T was not in the mix there. They were elsewhere. They originated from the Puerto Rican Tel Company. Later owned STC in the UK, BTN in Belgium and others. They invented the crossbar switch and Pulse-Code-Modulation. Eventually they sold the telecom stuff to Alcatel, now Alcatel-Lucent.
FWIW, Strowger got his patent on the stepping switch in 1891. He began an independant telephone company to use it. This company eventually become Automatic Electric. The cross-bar switch was developed in 1913 by J.N.Reynolds at Western Electric. General Telephone has a long and very complicated history. The Name dates from 1935 but the origins probably date back to 1918. General did eventually control Automatic Electric but AE was well established as a supplier of telephone equipment to independant (non-Bell system) telephone companies long before that. General, and its predecessor companies, bought up a great many small, independant telephone companies, mostly small town companies all throughout the 1920s to perhaps the 1960s. One of the problems GT had was that equipment was not standardized as it was in the Bell System and service was often inferior. Note that by the time the cross-bar switch had been patented the original Strowger patents had expired. 

--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, CA, USA
dickburk@xxxxxxxxxxxxx 
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