Western Electric

USA1869–19955 archived pages

Western Electric opened in Chicago in 1869 and was incorporated in 1872. Bell bought it in 1881, and for the next century it was the manufacturing arm of the Bell telephone system. Its engineers developed high-vacuum tubes for amplifying telephone signals from 1913, and the Vitaphone system it built brought synchronised sound to the movies in 1926.

From 1929 Western Electric sold complete cinema sound systems, including horn loudspeakers efficient enough to fill a theatre from a 3-watt amplifier. Its theatre amplifiers, transformers and tubes such as the 300B, introduced in 1938, are now among the most sought-after audio parts in the world. The 1984 Bell System breakup ended the company in its old form; in 1995 the Western Electric name and the licence to make tubes passed to a private firm in Rossville, Georgia, which revived the 300B.

The archive has 300B reissues and amplifiers from Altec, Masco, Grommes and others with Western Electric ancestry.

From the original manufacturer page

Western Electric Company (sometimes abbreviated WE and WECo) was an American electrical engineering company, the manufacturing arm of AT&T from 1881 to 1995. In 1929, Western Electric was also a big player in early cinema sound systems. It created the Western Electric Universal Base, a device by which early silent cinema projectors could be adapted to screen sound films. It also designed a wide-audio-range horn loudspeaker for cinemas. Western Electrics’ reputation for sound management was such that in 1949 President Truman requested that Western Electric manage a major defense laboratory, Sandia National Labs.

Western Electric

Western Electric in the archive