Automatic Electric manufactured coin-operated payphones for independent US telephone companies, supplying standardized, durable designs from the 1900s through 1980s period.
Typically anything made by Western Electric was of higher quality than Automatic Electric. In many instances, AE often simply copied the general design of WE products. This is obvious in the design of their three slot and one slot coin sets below. WE being the manufacturing and support arm of the Bell System generally meant that the budgets were there from parent company AT&T to produce a higher-quality product in an effort to minimize the service and maintenance costs. In addition, the Bell System’s footprint covered a much larger overall area than those served by independent telcos. The Bell System’s design standards for all products were for them to have a life span of 30 years. The smaller telcos (even GTE) had much smaller market share and operating budgets, so they commanded less-expensive products, and AE filled this void as much as possible. Of course, any public telephone product of any design is subject to severe abuse, so even the lower-quality AE models held up as well as possible for a lower price.
