page_title: Automatic Electric
section_title: Products
hierarchical_section_title: Automatic Electric / Products
caption_attribution_description: English: Advertisement for the Automatic (dial) telephone service and long distance telephone service of the Illinois Tunnel Company.
context_page_description: Automatic Electric Company was the largest of the manufacturing units of the Automatic Electric Group. It was a telephone equipment supplier for independent telephone companies in North America, and also had a worldwide presence. With its line of automatic telephone exchanges, it was also a long-term supplier of switching equipment to the Bell System, starting in 1919.
context_section_description: Among other equipment, Automatic Electric manufactured automatic stepping switches (specifically, "Strowger switches") which enabled Strowger's vision. These switches allowed customers to connect their own calls without operator assistance.
  Automatic Electric's rotary dial makes a single clicking sound as it is released but is otherwise fairly silent, while Western Electric's rotary dial has a distinctive whirring sound as the dial returns to the normal position. Many AE telephones use a distinctive dual-gong ringer, the low and high tones of which are a musical minor fifth apart, rather than the typical natural third interval of most Western Electric ringers.
  The GTD-5 EAX, GTE Automatic Electric's digital class 4/5 central office telephone switch, was first deployed on June 26, 1982.
caption: 1910 advertisement explaining how to use an Automatic Electric dial telephone to place long-distance calls.  The Illinois Tunnel Company in Chicago was one of the largest early users of Automatic Electric equipment.
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