Agere Systems is one of those new economy anomalies -- a startup with hundreds of years of experience. As we begin our own history as Agere Systems, take a look back at our origins and the technological breakthroughs and other events that define our company. Elisha Gray & Enos Barton form Gray & Barton Company, an electrical supply company and the begining of what will become Western Electric. Gray & Barton Company becomes Western Electric, what will be the manufacturing arm of the Bell System for over 100 years. Bell Labs is created and becomes the innovation engine that gives birth to the transistor, laser, solar cell, electronic switching and optoelectronics. Bell Labs researchers discover positive and negative regions in silicon, an essential discovery in recognizing the usefulness of silicon as a semiconductor. Caption: Professor Elisha Gray Caption: Left: Boettinger Book Photograph of all the employees of Gray and Barton in the early 1870's. Right: The little shop at Ottawa, Illinois, which was purchased from the Western Union Telegraph Company at the time Gray and Barton and Col. Anson Steger formed the “Western Electric Manufacturing Company.”