Re: Western Electric - Major Works - Status Today?

Jul 22, 2005 0 Replies


From a Lucent friend, an article on Hawthorne Works:


> At one time, Cicero, IL, was famous for two things that
> had absolutely nothing in common: Al Capone and Western
> Electric. The blue-collar town on the West Side of Chicago

Actually there was a connection, however slight. In the book Manufacturing the Future : A History of Western Electric by Stephen B. Adams and Orville R. Butler there is an anecdote about a W.E. statistician who wandered over to one of the gambling dens and used his knowledge of statistics to determine that the roulette wheels were not exactly random (because of personal idiocyncrasies of the operators). He was able to win a little money.

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