Western Electric Co., Inc. was founded in 1869. It was the primary manufacturer and supplier of Bell System telephone equipment from 1881 to 1984. In 1872, Enos M. Barton (a former technician at Western Union) and Elisha Gray, (an inventor) founded it as the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. They manufactured electrical products and telegraph equipment that they supplied to the Western Union telegraph company. In 1875, Elisha Gray sold his interest in Western Union. In 1881, the Bell Telephone Company acquired Western Electric, which now manufactured telephone instruments and equipment. In 1899, Western Electric acquired a majority stake in the Japanese Nippon Electric Company Ltd, later known as NEC. In 1907, the research and development departments of Western Electric and AT&T were merged. The location served Western’s newly formed Electrical Engineering Department, responsible for testing and inspecting its telephones and equipment, and AT&T’s Engineering Department retained responsibility for developing the Bell System. Thus was created Bell Telephone Laboratories. Effective January 1, 1984, a newly formed company, AT&T Technologies, Inc., assumed the corporate charter of Western Electric, which was divided into several divisions. Telephones manufactured by Western Electric before the dissolution continued to be manufactured and bore the company emblem, however, they did not have the Bell System logo or they had it hidden with metal filler inside all phone casings and most accessories, including new electronics with the initials WE .