The date of this advertisement is unknown. The text of the ad is reprinted below:
1892 - Original Strowger Switch, basis of the dial telephone and source of thousands of advances in many industries.
1958- This direct descendant today is activating many mechanical marvels of modern life, both in and outside the telephone field.
Where did automation begin?
It is hard to believe—but automation began with the crude contraption pictured on the left.
This is the original Strowger Switch, made by Automatic Electric in 1892 for use in the first dial telephone systems. But the principles which this device pioneered are the root of all automation today.
Automation might be defined as machines run by other machines through automatic controls.
And it is safe to say that the majority of mechanisms operated remotely today use types of relays and switches which Automatic Electric originated.
This includes everything from the machines in industrial plants, electronic computers ("mechanical brains") or guided missiles, to stock-exchange quotation boards and variable-pitch airplane propellers.
In the telephone field, Automatic Electric research and development have made two of the greatest recent contributions to the advancement of telephone communications.
One is dialing of long-distance calls without the need for calling the operator. The other is the automatic recording of billing data on toll calls.
All this grows out of an ambition to do things better than they have been done before—plus the resources and talents needed to make the dreams of yesterday the realities of today.
With new and expanded research facilities and production facilities, we are ready now to be of greater service than before.
Career opportunities available at Automatic Electric and General Telephone Laboratories for promising young people with experience in: Logical Circuit and System Design and Packaging, Magnetic and other Memory Devices, High-Frequency Pulse Techniques, Semiconductor Research, Electrical and Electromechanical Engineering. Write Engineering Personnel Department.
Automatic Electric
Northlake, Illinois
Subsidiary of General Telephone