The first commercial installation of a telephone dial accompanied the first commercial installation of a 99-line automatic telephone exchange in La Porte, Indiana, in 1892, which was based on the 1891 Strowger designs. The original dials required complex operational sequences. A workable, albeit error-prone, system was invented by the Automatic Electric Company using three push-buttons on the telephone. These buttons represented the hundreds, tens, and single units of a telephone number. When calling the subscriber number 163, for example, the user had to push the hundreds button once, followed by six presses of the tens button, and three presses of the units button. In 1896, this system was supplanted by an automatic "contact-making machine", or "calling device". Further development continued during the 1890s and the early 1900s in conjunction with improvements in switching technology.