Western Electric

Incorporated in Chicago, IL in 1872, the Western Electric Manufacturing Company was acquired by the Bell Telephone Company in 1881 and operated as the manufacturing arm of AT&T. The Western Electric facility in Allentown, PA became the production location for transistors and later ICs developed by Bell Telephone Laboratories. The semiconductor operation was renamed AT&T Microelectronics in 1988. AT&T spun-out the systems and technology units, including Bell Labs, as Lucent Technologies in 1996, and Lucent spun-out the semiconductor business as Agere Systems in 2002. Agere and LSI Logic merged in 2007. It was the scene of a number of technological innovations and also some seminal developments in industrial management. It also served as the purchasing agent for the member companies of the Bell System.