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POWER used the money to acquire small independents that could not keep up to the growing demands of burgeoning suburbia, which the Bell System had to forgo for antitrust reasons. He also set out to fill what he considered General's two biggest needs: manufacturing and research facilities similar to Bell's. In 1955 he bought Theodore Gary & Co., a large Midwestern independent that owned Automatic Electric Co., a major supplier of telephone equipment. General Telephone thus became not only its own equipment supplier, but a supplier for 4,000 independents to which Bell did not sell.
In 1958 Power pulled his biggest coup by arranging a merger with Sylvania Electric Products Inc. Sylvania's stock had a higher book value than General's, but Power picked it up in a bargain share-for-share trade, took over the helm of the merged companies. The acquisition not only gave General Telephone the scientists and engineers (3,000) that it needed for basic research, but a big manufacturing business.
Power has set up General Telephone for the communications revolution of the future. It is working on outer space research, techniques for using telephony in transmitting business data, electronic brains to direct a nationwide telephone system. It still uses the Bell System's long distance lines to link its subsidiaries, but Don Power has rid the company of its inferiority complex. Since he took over, the company's total assets have increased fivefold, its sales and revenue twelvefold. This year General plans to spend a record $275 million in capital investment, will soon float new stock, its biggest financing ever, to raise the cash. Most pleasing of all, General's yearly growth rate is 6.5%—higher than massive Mother Bell's.