Automatic Electric Company Chrome Payphone

In 1889, Almon Strowger, of Kansas City, Missouri, was inspired by the idea of manufacturing automatic telephone exchanges that would not require switchboard operators. Three years later he founded the Strowger Automatic Telephone Exchange Company, which held the first patents for the automatic telephone exchange. In 1901, Strowger helped form the Automatic Electric Company to which he leased his patents exclusively.
Throughout the 1910s and 1920s Automatic switches based on the Strowger system proliferated in independent telephone companies. In 1919, the Bell System was impacted considerably by organized operator strikes and the leadership abandoned its rejection of automatic switching equipment. As a result, Automatic Electric became a long-term supplier of switching equipment to the Bell System.

General Telephone and Electronics (GT&E) acquired Automatic Electric through a merger with the Theodore Gary & Company in 1955, and continued operating until 1983 where the company was merged into GTE Network Systems, and later AT&T Network Systems. In 1989, the remaining assets of the company were placed into a joint venture between AT&T and GTE called AG Communication Systems (the A and G respectively standing for the partners' names). In the 2000s, remnants of the company were acquired by Nokia. This particular model of payphone is unknown and is possibly from the 1950s. On the bottom you have the coin return and a lockable box to hold the charge, above that you have the instructions to make a call, above that you will find the dial assembly, and the very top, you will have the slots to to put change in.