Experience has proved the great value of centering these responsibilities in an organization that works as a unit of the System toward the same goals as the telephone companies—a service steadily improving and increasing in value to more and more people. [Illustration: _One of many assembly operations in making Bell telephones at a Western Electric plant in Indianapolis. One-fifth of these sets are now produced in colors._] Evolution of an Industry In the first few years after the telephone was invented, six different manufacturers made telephone apparatus for the Bell companies. Each produced equipment of different design and quality. It quickly became apparent that progress depended upon standardized equipment of the best possible quality. In 1882, the Bell System purchased the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. This company had grown out of a partnership formed in 1869 by Enos M. Barton and Elisha Gray. It had specialized at first in telegraph and then in telephone equipment. Ownership of Western Electric gave the System assurance of standardized equipment of high quality, reasonable prices, and a dependable source of supply. [Illustration: _A Western Electric installer, one of the members of a nation-wide team, puts the finishing touches on new central office switching equipment installed for a Bell telephone company._] [Illustration: _High-powered optical apparatus is needed to maintain the hair-splitting tolerances that are required in making miniature electronic tubes used in communications equipment._] Growing with the System, Western Electric became an enterprise of national stature. Its manufacturing operations are principally in Chicago, Ill., Kearny, N. J., Baltimore, Md., Allentown, Pa., Tonawanda, N. Y., Indianapolis, Ind., and Winston-Salem, N. C. In the years since World War II the company’s manufacturing facilities have undergone an almost continuous modernization and expansion. In addition to building a number of new factories, the company has rented or purchased other plants to obtain the manufacturing space required for the dual job of furnishing equipment needed by the armed forces and continuing to meet the requirements of the Bell System. A complex manufacturing job As manufacturing unit of the Bell System, Western Electric must be ready at all times to produce over 200,000 different kinds of apparatus and component parts for telephone equipment. Each year, about 70,000 of these are required and manufactured. The quantity of each item produced varies from one to many millions. Mass production methods are used wherever possible, but the items required in large quantities are very much in the minority. In a recent year, less than one per cent of the products manufactured were made in quantities of over 100,000. About 30 per cent were made in quantities of less than 10. [Illustration: _Applying lead sheathing to telephone cable._]