Graybar Electric Company is an electrical distribution business, included on the Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations.

Company History

Elisha Gray, an inventor, and Enos Barton, an entrepreneur, founded Gray & Barton in Cleveland in 1869. In 1872, this partnership became Western Electric Company, which supplied telegraph components to the Western Union Telegraph Company. After the invention of the telephone, Western Electric became the exclusive manufacturer of the telephone equipment for the Bell System. By the early 1900s, Western had grown to be one of the largest manufacturing concerns in the world.

Western Electric also managed a thriving electrical distribution business, furnishing its customers with non-telephone products made by other manufacturers. This electrical distribution business was spun off from Western Electric and organized into a separate company, Graybar Electric Company, Inc., in 1925. Graybar employees bought their company in 1929. The corporate headquarters moved from the Graybar Building in New York City to St. Louis, Missouri in 1982.