Stromberg-Carlson
Alfred Stromberg and Androv Carlson, Swedish immigrants who had worked for American Bell Telephone, each put up $500 in Chicago in 1894 to start a firm making telephone equipment. In 1904 the Rochester-based Home Telephone Company bought it and moved operations to Rochester, New York.
Stromberg-Carlson grew into a major consumer electronics maker: telephones, radio receivers and, after the Second World War, televisions and high-end stereo equipment. Its 1950s amplifiers carried the same engineering conservatism as its telephone gear. General Dynamics bought the company in 1955 and sold its operations in 1982.
The archive has the AU-58B tube amplifier and the Signet 70.
Stromberg-Carlson was a telecommunications equipment and electronics manufacturing company in the United States. It was formed in 1894 as a partnership by Alfred Stromberg and Androv Carlson. It was one of five companies that controlled the national supply of telephone equipment until after World War II.
In 1894, Alexander Graham Bell’s patent for the telephone expired. Stromberg-Carlson was originally located in Chicago, with Carlson managing manufacturing and Stromberg responsible for marketing. Stromberg-Carlson quickly established a reputation for reliable equipment and stable prices.
In 1901, the temporary chief executive of the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company, Wallace De Wolf, assisted executives of rival telephone equipment manufacturer Western Electric in an attempt to take over Stromberg-Carlson. A bitter stockholder fight ensued, and the takeover attempt failed. Stromberg-Carlson reincorporated as a New York state corporation in 1902, where state law better protected the company from takeover efforts.
The company also became involved in the broadcasting industry, acquiring WHAM, the oldest station in Rochester, and rebuilding it into a high power station; one of the first three FM broadcasting stations in the United States and possibly the oldest still in operation, now known as WBZA, dating from 1939. In 1955, Stromberg-Carlson was purchased by General Dynamics. In 1970, Stromberg delivered the first CrossReed PBX to the newly constructed Disney World in Orlando Florida. Over the next 10 years more than 7,000 CrossReeds were delivered globally. In addition to telephone equipment Stromberg-Carlson produced military communications gear, institutional sound systems, and high-end stereophonic equipment.
