Lenkurt Electric Company

Last updated

Lenkurt Electric Company was an American microwave and telecommunications company. It was established in California and grew to a sizable company by 1955. [1] It was later acquired by General Telephone and Electronics Company.

Contents

History

The roots of Lenkurt Electric Company can be traced as early as 1935 when its predecessor started the development and manufacture of electronic equipment. [2] The company adopted its name in 1933 [2] and was taken from its founders Lennart Erickson and Kurt Appert. [1] By this time, it focused on the development and manufacture of carrier current communications equipment. [2] In the first year they were based in San Francisco with 10 employees, but this grew to around 75 by 1947 when they moved to San Carlos, California. [3] The company published a monthly monograph for customers titled Lenkurt Demodulator that served as both educational and promotional material.

In 1959 the company merged with General Telephone and Electronics Company. [3]

Kurt Appert collaborated with Arthur Norberg in an oral history project. He published Electrical Engineering and the Lenkurt Electric Company: Oral History Transcript in 1974. Appert provided his own biographical information.

Unbuilt factory

In 1955 they engaged Frank Lloyd Wright, assisted by Aaron Green to build them new premises in San Carlos. However, the building was never built as Lenkurt were bought out by GTE. [4]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magnavox</span> American electronics company

Magnavox is an American electronics company that since 1974 has been a subsidiary of the Dutch electronics corporation Philips.

The General Electric Company (GEC) was a major British industrial conglomerate involved in consumer and defence electronics, communications, and engineering. The company was founded in 1886, was Britain's largest private employer with over 250,000 employees in the 1980s, and at its peak in the 1990s, made profits of over £1 billion a year.

The Western Electric Company was an American electrical engineering and manufacturing company officially founded in 1869. A wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T for most of its lifespan, it served as the primary equipment manufacturer, supplier, and purchasing agent for the Bell System from 1881 to 1984 when it was dismantled. The company was responsible for many technological innovations as well as developments in industrial management.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Westinghouse Electric Corporation</span> American manufacturing company

The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company founded in 1886 by George Westinghouse. It was originally named "Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company", and was renamed "Westinghouse Electric Corporation" in 1945. The company acquired the CBS television network in 1995, and was renamed "CBS Corporation", until being acquired by Viacom in 1999. That merger was completed on April 26, 2000. The CBS Corporation name was later reused for one of the two companies resulting from the split of Viacom in 2006.

Automatic Electric Company (AE) was the largest of the manufacturing units of the Automatic Electric Group. It was a telephone equipment supplier for independent telephone companies in North America, and also had a worldwide presence. With its line of automatic telephone exchanges, it was also a long-term supplier of switching equipment to the Bell System, starting in 1919.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited</span> Central Publoc Sector Undertaking

Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL) is an Indian central public sector undertaking. It is under the ownership of Ministry of Heavy Industries, Government of India. It is based in New Delhi, India. Established in 1956, BHEL is India's largest government owned power generation equipment manufacturer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cecil Howard Green</span>

Cecil Howard Green was a British-born American geophysicist, electrical engineer, and electronics manufacturing executive, who trained at the University of British Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thorn Electrical Industries</span>

Thorn Electrical Industries Limited was a British electrical engineering company. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange, but merged with EMI Group to form Thorn EMI in 1979. It was de-merged in 1996 and became a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, but was acquired by the Japanese Nomura Group only two years later, it is now owned by Terra Firma Capital Partners.

Charles Vincent Litton Sr. (1904–1972) was an engineer and inventor from the area now known as Silicon Valley.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanmina Corporation</span>

Sanmina Corporation is an American electronics manufacturing services (EMS) provider headquartered in San Jose, California that serves original equipment manufacturers in communications and computer hardware fields. The firm has nearly 80 manufacturing sites, and is one of the world’s largest independent manufacturers of printed circuit boards and backplanes. As of 2022, it is ranked number 482 in the Fortune 500 list.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brown, Boveri & Cie</span> Swiss group of electrical engineering companies (1891-1988)

Brown, Boveri & Cie. was a Swiss group of electrical engineering companies. It was founded in Zürich, in 1891 by Charles Eugene Lancelot Brown and Walter Boveri who worked at the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1970 BBC took over the Maschinenfabrik Oerlikon. In 1988 it merged with ASEA to form ABB.

Eimac is a trade mark of Eimac Products, part of the Microwave Power Products Division of Communications & Power Industries. It produces power vacuum tubes for radio frequency applications such as broadcast and radar transmitters. The company name is an initialism from the names of the founders, William Eitel and Jack McCullough.

Delco Electronics Corporation was the automotive electronics design and manufacturing subsidiary of General Motors based in Kokomo, Indiana, that manufactured Delco Automobile radios and other electric products found in GM cars. In 1972, General Motors merged it with the AC Electronics division and it continued to operate as part of the Delco Electronics division of General Motors. When the corporation acquired the Hughes Aircraft Company, Delco was merged with it to form Hughes Electronics as an independent subsidiary.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">V. C. Morris Gift Shop</span>

The V. C. Morris Gift Shop is located at 140 Maiden Lane in downtown San Francisco, California, United States, and was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1948. The store was used by Wright as a physical prototype, or proof of concept for the circular ramp at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leonard F. Fuller</span> American radio pioneer

Dr. Leonard F. Fuller was a noted American radio pioneer.

Peninsula Engineering Group, Inc. (PEGI) was a United States company which was a pioneer in on-frequency microwave and cellular repeaters. From its founding in 1983 until its demise in 2002, the company was a technological leader in the field of low-cost on-frequency repeaters, and was awarded numerous patents. Peninsula Engineering Solutions, Inc. is a successor company that continues to provide both new products and parts based on the PEGI designs. The company went through a few name changes; in 1992 it became "Peninsula Wireless Communications" and in 1995 again changed names to "Repeater Technologies."

Noel Lee is an American engineer, inventor, and businessman. He is the founder and CEO of Monster Inc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ling Po (artist)</span>

Ling Po was an artist and apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright. Chow's English name "Ling Po" was coined by Wright by combining Chow's ancestral home Ningbo and the famous Chinese poet Li Bai.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Max McGraw</span> American entrepreneur

Max McGraw was an American entrepreneur who founded McGraw-Edison and Centel. He financed marketing of the first domestic toaster, the Toastmaster. He was also a conservationist and hunter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Drew Baglino</span> Powertrain and Energy Engineering head at Tesla.

Andrew David "Drew" Baglino is a manufacturing industry executive working in the field of new energy. As of October 2019 Baglino is the Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering at Tesla.

References

  1. 1 2 Pfeiffer, Bruce Brooks; Wright, Frank Lloyd (1999). Treasures of Taliesin: Seventy-seven Unbuilt Designs. San Francisco, CA: Pomegranate. p. 59. ISBN   978-0-7649-1041-8.
  2. 1 2 3 Signals. The Association. 1951.
  3. 1 2 Appert, Kurt E.; Norberg, Art (1974). Electrical engineering and the Lenkurt Electric Company : oral history transcript, 1974. Berkeley: University of California. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
  4. "Aaron Green Associates - Frank Lloyd Wright Project: Lenkurt Electric Company". www.agaarchitects.com. Retrieved 29 August 2017.