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Automatic phonographs, radios and televisions · Capehart-Farnsworth
On the record
Founded: incorporated February 1928, Huntington, Indiana. Radiomuseum’s Capehart history gives incorporation in February 1928 for the Capehart Automatic Phonograph Company; the contemporary Music Trade Review (January 1930) narrates the same start: Capehart arrived in Huntington in February 1928 with one hand-made Orchestrope, formed the company there in a five-room cottage with four assistants. Conflict flagged: Radiomuseum’s summary table and the Museum of Broadcast Communications give a 1927 founding year — carried as an unproven pre-incorporation / idea year, not the incorporation date. Fort Wayne arrival: 15 June 1929 (the January 1930 Music Trade Review, a contemporary trade paper, states the move date and plant expressly).
Founder: Homer Earl Capehart (born 6 June 1897, Algiers, Indiana) (MBC; Radiomuseum), a former Holcomb & Hoke salesman who became a U.S. Senator from Indiana, 1944–1962. Philo T. Farnsworth is not a Capehart founder: he is the second founder-figure of this entry, whose Farnsworth Television & Radio Corporation bought Capehart a decade later.
What it did: the Orchestrope — an automatic phonograph / record changer that played 28 records, 56 selections, on both sides continuously, turning the records automatically — and luxury radio-phonographs under the Capehart and Amperion names, aimed at the expensive end of the market while competitors went cheap in the Depression (MBC).
Course (Capehart, Fort Wayne): the company moved on 15 June 1929 into its new plant on East Pontiac Street, Fort Wayne, built to carry five years’ growth; by January 1930 ground had been broken at Thanksgiving to double the plant, twenty adjoining acres had been bought, and the trade paper projected $12,000,000 of product in 1930 — a projection, printed here as a projection, not a result (Music Trade Review, Jan 1930). Site conflict: an inherited account places a Capehart-Farnsworth plant on Bueter Road (ACGSI Magnavox page); every Capehart / Farnsworth source worked for this entry places the company at 3700 / 3702 East Pontiac Street, and the Bueter Road attribution is not used for this company. Capehart himself left for the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company — Radiomuseum dates the move 1932, MBC gives his Wurlitzer vice-presidency 1933–1938; the year is flagged, the move agreed.
Course (Farnsworth succession): sale to Farnsworth, 1938/1939 — the transition is documented, the exact step-year conflicts and is flagged (1938 sale with a 1939 Fort Wayne plant opening, in MBC and the Indiana Historical Bureau account; bankruptcy in March 1939 and a Farnsworth purchase that month, in Radiomuseum; purchase in 1939, in Hawfield). The new firm, Farnsworth Television & Radio Corporation (E. A. Nicholas president, Philo T. Farnsworth director of research), made Farnsworth, Capehart and Panamuse radios, phonographs and televisions at 3702 East Pontiac; in World War II the plants converted to armed-forces communications equipment, radar and missile-guidance work (1941–1946), and Farnsworth expanded to seven Indiana factories in the war years.
Fate: absorbed by ITT; consumer line split off and sold; Fort Wayne site continued as ITT defence electronics, with an ITT year conflict flagged. The News-Sentinel decade account, Hawfield and MBC all date the sale of the Fort Wayne business to International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) to 1949; a Philo Farnsworth summary gives 1951 — flagged, not reconciled here. In 1954 the division was split, Farnsworth Electronics continuing as a wholly owned ITT subsidiary on the Fort Wayne defence and aerospace work; in 1956 the Capehart consumer manufacturing was sold to the Ben Gross Corporation — the Fort Wayne manufacturing properties were retained by ITT — and “the Capehart name disappeared from the history of radio and television” (MBC). The former Farnsworth factory at 3702 East Pontiac was razed in 2010 (single chain — carried at that weight).
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- § 05 — business
Sources: Music Trade Review, January 1930 — https://elibrary.arcade-museum.com/Music-Trade-Review/1930-89-1/26 ; Museum of Broadcast Communications, “Capehart Corporation” — https://www.museum.tv/radio-encyclopedia-2/capehart-corporation ; Radiomuseum, Capehart Corp., Fort Wayne — https://www.radiomuseum.org/dsp_hersteller_detail.cfm?company_id=2118?language_id=3 ; News-Sentinel, Hawfield, 13 Dec 1993 — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/haw16.php ; Indiana Historical Bureau blog — https://blog.history.in.gov/philo-t-farnsworth-conversing-with-einstein-achieving-fusion-in-fort-wayne/ ; News-Sentinel decade account, 1950s — http://egen.fortwayne.com/ns/projects/history/2000/1950/atom1.php . Sources as cited in the profile.