ABSTRACT
A firm established in 1869 by Enos Barton and Elisha Gray, manufacturer of the equipment used by the Bell Telephone Co., and controlled by Bell after 1882. It has remained in the Bell family, currently as a subsidiary of American Telephone and Telegraph Co. (AT&T). In the 1920s at Western Electric, J.P. Maxfield and H.C. Harrison made important experiments in electrical recording, and developed the major system used by Victor and Columbia. A steel-tape magnetic recorder was developed by Western Electric in 1940.
