IPR Daily
Almon Brown Strowger (February 11, 1839 – May 26, 1902) was an American inventor. Anecdotally, Strowger's undertaking business where he was a funeral director was losing clients to a competitor whose telephone-operator wife was redirecting everyone who called for Strowger. Motivated to remove the intermediary operator, he invented the first automatic telephone exchange in 1889; he received its patent in 1891. It is reported that he initially constructed a model of his invention from a round collar box and some straight pins.
Source: Wikipedia
Editor: IPR Daily-Jason