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Overview

This nondescript factory building produced early tubes and radio equipment for various purposes, including ship-to-shore communications. It occupied a part of Palo Alto that had a light industrial character with various machine shops, auto repair garages, and small factories from the 1910s well into the 1980s. In 1910s and 1920s, the Federal Telegraph Company emerged on the vanguard of radio engineering, developing new designs for vacuum tubes and Poulsen arc transmitters.. Its employees included such pioneering figures in electronics as Lee DeForest (1873-1961), Frederick A. Kolster (1883-1950), Cyril F. Elwell (1884-1963), Leonard F. Fuller (1890-1987), and Cecil H. Green (1900-2003).

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Building History

This was the second facility utilized by the Federal Telegraph Company (FTC) in Palo Alto during the 1909-1916 period. It was a utilitarian structure, made of corrugated metal, inexpensive and rapid to erect. The Perham Collection of Electronics web site has stated of the building: ""Federal Telegraph thrived with US Navy contracts during World War I. Growing rapidly, in 1916 Federal moved to a new facility, a long corrugated iron building located between El Camino Real and Alma Street not far from its original location. At its peak in 1917, the company employed more than 300 engineers, technicians and other staff. Absorbed by International Telegraph and Telephone (IT&T) in the mid-1920s, the Federal facility was removed from Palo Alto to New Jersey as a cost-saving measure in 1931." (See The Perham Collection of Early Electronics, "Federal at Home in Palo Alto," accessed 11/20/2017.) By the mid-1920s, FTC had financial backing from San Francisco banker Rudolph Spreckels (1872-1958), son of sugar magnate Claus Spreckels, to expand their business into consumer electronics. Although the firm had many brilliant engineers working for it, the company could never penetrate the home radio market. FTC was swallowed up by I,T and T, and the Palo Alto factory closed. ITT relocated FTC's main factory to Newark, NJ.

Building Notes

The building had a wood frame covered in corrugated metal. Large trusses supported either a flat or very shallowly-pitched gable roof. The trusses were positioned to enable expansive two rows of steel sash windows to illuminate the shop floor, one at the floor level, the other above acting as clerestory lighting. Early photos show the long production benches where grid audion tubes and other equipment was made.

By c. 1923, there was another commercial entity called the "Federal Telephone and Telegraph Company" operating with a factory and home office in Buffalo, NY. It produced telephones, telegraph and radio apparatus and accessories. It does not appear to have been connected with the Federal Telegraph Company. The Federal Telegraph Company altered its name to the Federal Telephone and Radio Company in the 1940s.

PCAD id: 21576