Inside Western Electric's Service Center, located at 2400 E. Yates Avenue in the City of Commerce, thousands of bins of wires, coils, dials, receivers and mechanical parts that defy description are lined up, ready to be refurbished if possible. 1,300 employees work in the warehouse, the size of 20 football fields, recycling the 1.6 million telephone sets taken out of service annually by Pacific Telephone. Every phone that comes in is completely broken down, cleaned, repainted, buffed and tested before it's put back into service. Equipment that cannot be repaired is either sold for scrap or sent to be melted down and returned as useable products.
Type
Image
Format
1 photographic print :b&w ;26 x 21 cm. Photographic prints
Western Electric Company Western Electric Company--Employees Recycled products--California--Commerce Remanufacturing--California--Commerce Telephones Men--California--Commerce Assembly-line methods Commerce (Calif.) Los Angeles Herald-Examiner photographs Herald-Examiner Collection photographs
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