George B. Quatman worked at Sidney Telephone Co. in Ohio during school vacations. With Western Electric at Hawthorne, Illinois, he was an equipment engineer and special circuit designer, 1911-1913. He returned to Sidney Telephone in 1916 as wire chief and was promoted to manager in 1918. In 1924, he organized Ohio Telephone Service Co., serving Sidney, Botkins, Jackson Center and Greenville Home Telephone Companies. In 1926, he organized Telephone Service Co. of Ohio with headquarters in Lima, serving as vice president and general manager and in time he became one of its leading stockholders. He established a growth of 125 exchanges throughout Ohio, serving over 200,000 stations. From 1931 to 1943 he formed four other companies, including one providing technical engineering services on a professional basis to Independent telephone companies, and he salvaged and rebuilt telephone equipment for resale. From 1944 until his death in 1964 he served as consulting engineer at Automatic Electric.
Quatman was an active member of the board of directors, Ohio Independent Telephone Association, 1953-1964, and served as president, 1961-1962. He was granted several patents on his inventions, which included “Independent” operators to establish intercity toll dial service, an automatic toll ticketing device for use with cordless boards, simplified dial toll terminating equipment, then first push-button permitting local and direct intercity dialing, automatic registering and metering units, and the establishment of the first circuit in Ohio for voice-space communication through Telstar. His philanthropies were many.
