#WesternElectric June 15

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post.

Today for the 30-Day Sign Coach4aday Challenge my post is about Western Electric.

Every day I walk past a WESTERN ELECTRIC collectible wooden wall mounted phone from the early part of the 20th Century. It was a birthday gift from my wife when we moved into our home which was built in 1910. Pretty sure at one time our house had one of these.

My dad worked for NJ Bell (today is called Verizon NJ Bell) and I have a telephone related memorabilia including the gem shown below. Almost all of them have a Western Electric logo on them

Western Electric’s logo on this phone is on the nameplate located under the nickel-plated adjustable mouthpiece. The photo below is hard to see but under focused lighting it is very visible.

One of the first telephones commercially available were these wall telephone, which is basically a wooden rectangular box that housed the necessary components with a receiver that hung on the exterior. 1879 saw the first wall telephone sold. Western Electric in 1901 became the exclusive supplier, purchaser, and distributor for AT&T and all its subsidiaries. Beginning in 1901 600,000 telephones had been manufactured and installed. Telephone installations exploded by 1910. In ten years, the number would increase to 5.8 million. Most of them were wall mounted phones.