Sylvania Electric Products

Sylvania Electric Products Inc. was an East Coast American manufacturer of electrical and electronic equipment, including at various times incandescent light bulbs, vacuum tubes, fluorescent lamps, radio transmitters and receivers, customer-specified devices, cathode ray tubes and television sets, semiconductors and integrated circuits, and mainframe computers such as MOBIDIC. They were one of the companies involved in the development of the COBOL programming language.

The company was an innovator and through its research department obtained hundreds of patents. Among the innovations was the first commercially relevant line of TTL logic integrated circuits.

The company history can be traced back to 1901, when Frank A. Poor, a merchant in agriculture products from Salem, Massachusetts, partnered up to start a small business refilling burned-out light bulbs.

History

The Hygrade Sylvania Corporation was formed with the 1931 merger of the Nilco Lamp Works, Inc., Sylvania Products Co. and . Hygrade and Nilco manufactured incandescent lamps under license from General Electric, Hygrade (since 1928) and Sylvania (since 1924) made vacuum tubes under license from RCA.

Between June 17, 1933, and October 14, 1933, employment increased from 2,511 to 4,750, weekly payroll from $57,000 to $88,000 in the company's 4 plants (Salem, Emporium, St. Marys, Clifton with a combined floor space of 9.7 acres / 423,000sqft[8]).[9] The company had a total production capacity for 120,000 lamps and 100,000 tubes per day.[8]

In 1936 a second plant of 91,600sqft was built for $330,000 in Salem on Loring Avenue exclusively for vacuum tube production and absorbed that part of the business from the main Salem plant.[10] Also in 1936 the Economic Lamp Co. of Malden, Massachusetts was acquired. This included a license agreement with General Electric[11] and Hygrade's quota rose from 8.2242% to 9.124% of General Electric's domestic sales of standard (non-miniature) light bulbs.[12] The Malden plant was disposed of some time before 1941.[13]

In 1939, Hygrade Sylvania started preliminary research on fluorescent technology, and later that year, demonstrated the first linear, or tubular, fluorescent lamp. It was featured at the 1939 New York World's Fair.[14] Sylvania acquired multiple fluorescent lamp related licenses from other companies, including for the production of chemicals and In April 1940 began mass production of fluorescent lamp fixtures, formerly handled in Salem, on 70,000sqft leased floor space in Ipswich and within a year extended the lease by an additional 48,000sqft.[13]

Just before the war the company made additional financial transactions.

During World War II, Sylvania was chosen from among several competing companies to manufacture the miniature vacuum tubes used in proximity fuze shells due to its quality standards and mass production capabilities.[19] The new fluorescent lamp plant in Danvers was working overtime to meet the demand of factories now run on a 24-hour basis.[21] In 1942 and 1943 the company made further financial transactions. Sylvania announced on August 2, 1943, the acquisition of its fifteenth manufacturing plant, a former motor sales and repair shop in Warren, Pennsylvania which was converted to produce assembly parts for lamps and tubes.[26] About 85% of Sylvania's production in 1943 was for the war effort and production was expanding further in 1944 amidst a leveling off throughout the industry in general. In May 1944 Sylvania acquired the Colonial Radio Corp as a wholly owned subsidiary, a producer of radio receivers. Throughout 1944 and the first half of 1945, 85% of Sylvania's and essentially all of Colonial Radio's production was for war. Sylvania became a much more decentralized company during the war. Production capacity was rapidly increased with the opening of feeder plants in small nearby towns, some of which were government owned and sponsored. The main plants tilted more towards the final assembly stages in the supply chain.[29] Since Sylvania was on a path to continue growing, some of the government owned plants were naturally taken over, which required more capital. These were the complete plants built at Williamsport and Brookville and additions to company plants (some old and some only opened during the war) at Ipswich, Mill Hall, Altoona, Towanda, Warren and Emporium. The government received approximately $3 million in exchange. In 1946, the Loring Avenue plant in Salem was converted to lamp production and its tube business moved to the Pennsylvania cluster.[36]

Sylvania raised $10 million with an October 1945 sale of its new $4 preferred stock and redeemed all of what was left of the 1942 15-year bonds.

In August 1948 RCA became licensee for some 200 patents held by Sylvania, the agreement ran for 7 years at royalties of 0.75% but not exceeding $200,000 per year.[39]

Sylvania in 1948 began to greatly expand its capacity for cathode ray tube production. The program was revised at the end of 1948, when the attained capacity of 500,000 CRTs per year was decided to be further tripled. Production began in the Emporium radio tube plant and in the latter part of 1948 new plants in Ottawa, Ohio and Seneca Falls, New York were bought.[41]

Sylvania entered the television field with its September 7, 1949, launch of Sylvania Television branded devices (10-inch, 12.5-inch and 16-inch variants) sold at $199.95 - $449.95 and manufactured in the Colonial Radio Corp plant in Buffalo.[42]

The Sylvania Electric Products explosion, which involved scrap thorium, occurred on July 2, 1956, at their facility in Bayside, Queens, New York City.[44][45] The incident injured nine people;[44] one employee subsequently died of his injuries.[46]

In 1959, Sylvania Electronics merged with General Telephone to form General Telephone and Electronics (GTE) in the largest merger of the decade.

Sylvania developed the earliest flash cubes for still cameras, later selling the technology to Eastman Kodak Company, and later a 10-flash unit called FlipFlash, as well as a line of household electric light bulbs, which continued during GTE's ownership, later sold off to the German manufacturer Osram, and is today marketed as Osram Sylvania.

In June 1964, Sylvania unveiled a color TV picture tube in which europium-bearing phosphor was used for a much brighter, truer red than was possible before.[47]

Through merger and acquisitions, the company became a significant, but never dominating supplier of electrical distribution equipment, including transformers and switchgear, residential and commercial load centers and breakers, pushbuttons, indicator lights, and other hard-wired devices. All were manufactured and distributed under the brand name GTE Sylvania, with the name Challenger used for its light commercial and residential product lines. GTE Sylvania contributed to the technological advancement of electrical distribution products in the late 1970s with several interesting product features. At the time, they were the leading supplier of vacuum cast coil transformers, manufactured in their Hampton, Virginia plant. Their transformers featured aluminum primary windings and were cast using relatively inexpensive molds, allowing them to produce cast coil transformers in a variety of KVA capacities, primary and secondary voltages and physical coil sizes, including low profile coils for mining and other specialty applications. They also developed the first medium voltage 3 phase panel that could survive a dead short across two phases. Their patented design used bus bars encapsulated in a thin coating of epoxy and then bolted together across all three phases, using special non-conductive fittings.

By 1981 GTE had made the decision to exit the electrical distribution equipment market and began selling off its product lines and manufacturing facilities. The Challenger line, mostly manufactured at the time in Jackson, Mississippi, was sold to a former officer of GTE, who used the Challenger name as the name of his new company. Challenger flourished, and was eventually sold to Westinghouse, and later Eaton Corporation. By the mid-1980s, the GTE Sylvania electrical equipment product line and name was no more.

In 1993 GTE exited the lighting business to concentrate on its core telecomms operations. The European, Asian and Latin American operations are now under the ownership of Havells Sylvania. With the acquisition of the North American division by Osram GmbH in January 1993 Osram Sylvania Inc. was established.[48]

Polling

The New York Stock Exchange conducted a polling campaign from 1942-1959 to determine the value of the company.

Brand name

In 1981, GTE Sylvania sold the rights to the name Sylvania and Philco for use on consumer electronics equipment only, to the Netherlands' NV Philips. Philips wanted the Philco name as the Philco trademark precluded selling products under their own name in the United States. This marked the end of Sylvania's TV production in Batavia, New York, USA, and Smithfield, North Carolina, USA. The Sylvania Smithfield plant later became Channel Master. The rights to the Sylvania name in many countries are held by the U.S. subsidiary of the German company Osram. The Sylvania brand name is owned worldwide, apart from Australia, Canada, Mexico, Thailand, New Zealand, Puerto Rico and the USA, by Havells Sylvania, headquartered in London.

Advertising

• From 1951 until 1956, Sylvania sponsored the game show Beat the Clock. The grand prizes on the show would be Sylvania television sets, and some consolation prizes would be Sylvania radios. Sylvania "Blue Dot for sure shot" flashbulbs would be used to take a photograph of the contestants in awkward outfits or messy stunts.
• One of Sylvania's heavily advertised TV features was a lighted perimeter mask of adjustable brightness called "HALOLIGHT", which was purported to ease the optical transition if a viewer glanced from a dark background to the bright TV screen. Today Philips markets an Ambilight feature, lighting the wall behind a flat display to soften the viewing experience. HALOLIGHT could not be adapted for color TV, because color TV white balance (aka tracking from low to high brightness) was unpredictable. Since the white color temperature of the HALOLIGHT and the illuminated color screen could not be made equivalent, HALOLIGHT was withdrawn.
• Osram Sylvania sponsored the It's a Small World ride at Disneyland in California with a twelve-year agreement starting in 2009.[68] In 2014, the sponsor logo at the attraction's entrance changed to that of Siemens, the parent company of Sylvania.

Hygrade Lamp Company

The Hygrade Lamp Company was incorporated with a capital of $300,000[69] in Massachusetts on September 19, 1917[70] as successor/continuation of the lamp business founded in 1901 by Frank A. Poor (1880-1956[71]).[72][73] Hygrade manufactured incandescent light bulbs under a license agreement with General Electric Co. which expired on December 11, 1934 (but was then extended with a new agreement[12]). Production grew from

Hygrade's main (and most of the time only) plant was located in Salem, Massachusetts. It had opened in February 1916 when the equipment was relocated from the former small manufacturing shop in Danvers.[72]

In 1917 acquired the F. V. Rooney Lamp Co and Dexter Lamp Co. and the Alpha Lamp Co. in 1918. Companies acquired with their General Electric licenses (quotas) were the Lux Manufacturing Co in 1922 and Triumph Lamp Co. in 1928.[12]

In August 1928 Hygrade acquired the assets and quotas[12] of the Vosburgh Miniature Lamp Co., which produced five million automobile bulbs a year. This made Hygrade the third largest producer of large bulbs and fourth largest producer of auto bulbs (in the United States). The assets were moved to the Salem plant.[82]

Hygrade produced vacuum tubes beginning in 1928 through the wholly owned subsidiary Neptron Corp. Production was moved from Beverly to Salem at the end of 1928, at which time daily production totaled 1,000 vacuum tubes.[83]

In October 1928 Hygrade (and/or independent underwriters) made an initial public offering.

Management consisted of Frank A. Poor, Edward J. Poor, and Walter E. Poor; they and their families owned more than 50% of the company's stock.[87]

Hygrade entered into a license agreement with RCA for the manufacture of vacuum tubes in May 1929, when its daily output was 5,000 and plans were in place to produce 15,000 by September 1929.[88] Production capacity in June 1930 was 20,000 tubes per day, total sales in 1929 was 624,000 tubes and contracts entered into indicated that 1930 would surpass this number.[89]

The Hygrade Employee's Association was formed in January 1919, every dollar paid in was matched with one dollar from the company. The association provided sickness/disability and life insurance.[90]

• 3,100,000 in 1917
• 5,600,000 in 1922
• 11,000,000 in 1928 (not including Vosburgh Miniature Lamp Co)

External links

• LEDVANCE Sylvania General Lighting site
• Feilo Sylvania Group web site