United States Instrument Corporation

The United States Instrument Corporation (USI) was a company headquartered in Charlottesville that served as a major manufacturer of telephone components and sound-powered equipment during World War II. A local publication known as The Communicator was printed bimonthly between 1956 and 1960 for the use of the corporation's employees.

In the late 1950's, the corporation was acquired by Stromberg-Carlson, a telecommunications equipment company that was seeking greater involvement within the nation's independent telephone industry and subsequently moved several of its own telephone manufacturing divisions into the former USI plant. In the early 1960's, the original USI patents for sound-powered equipment were sold by Stromberg-Carlson to a new company known as the Dynalec Corporation, which began manufacturing headsets in Sodus, New York following the purchase of the Charlottesville facility by the Comdial Corporation in 1982.