On September 14, 1902, Western Electric purchased 113 acres of prairie land west of Chicago in an area known as “Hawthorne” [now Cicero] to build the manufacturing arm of the Bell Telephone System.  The rural Hawthorne Works plant became a self-sufficient city, with a hospital, fire brigade, laundry, greenhouse, a brass band, running track, tennis courts, gymnasium, an annual beauty pageant and a staff of trained nurses who made house calls.

In 1913, Western Electric developed the high vacuum tube, thereby ushering in the electronic age.  The company subsequently invented the loudspeaker, public address systems, radar, brought sound to motion pictures, and most importantly, the transistor for which Bell Labs researchers won the Nobel Prize.  Hawthorne was also the cradle of industrial psychology, with a series of experiments that began in 1924.

By 1917, the Hawthorne Works facility employed 25,000 people, many of them Cicero residents of Czech or Polish descent, who produced telephones, cable and every major telephone switching system in the country.  In 1900, 676,733 Bell telephone stations were owned and connected in the country; by 1910, 3 years after Hawthorne Works opened, these employees produced 5,142,699 telephones and by 1920, 11,795,747 Bell telephones.  Over 14,000 different types of apparatus were manufactured at the plant to provide the telecommunications infrastructure for this exponential growth.  In its heyday in the mid-1950’s, Western Electric employed nearly 45,000 at its Hawthorne Works.

In the early forties, on the eve of World War II, roughly 90 percent of demand for Western Electric’s products came from one customer:  the Bell System.  By 1944, 85 percent of demand for Western Electric’s products came from the federal government, for which the company provided more than 30 percent of all electronic gear for war.

The men and women of Hawthorne Works were the men and women of America representing all cultures, demonstrating the urge to learn, grow and prosper.  Hawthorne’s giant buildings and equipment were just concrete, brick and metal.  Hawthorne’s heart was its people.  Morton College dedicates this Museum to the employees of Hawthorne Works whose labor profoundly improved our quality of life.