Capehart, Farnsworth, and the Pontiac Street plant — ITT's roots here

1927 – 1954

The seed corn of the defense industry: Fort Wayne's second electronics lineage began with a phonograph maker. Homer E. Capehart founded the Capehart Corporation in Fort Wayne in 1927 to build automatic phonographs and high-end radio-phonographs. In 1938–39 — the Museum of Broadcast Communications dates the sale of the company and its plants to 1938; the radio collectors' record puts Farnsworth's takeover amid Capehart's March 1939 bankruptcy — the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation bought Capehart, kept its name for quality consumer sets, and made Fort Wayne its seat: the general office and research laboratory stood at 3702 East Pontiac Street, with a further factory at Marion, Indiana. One clarification belongs in print: Philo T. Farnsworth invented electronic television in California in 1927, a decade before his company came here — his entry sits in Inventors & Inventions — and what Fort Wayne got was not the invention but the company: its laboratories, its engineers, and its plants.

War conversion and the ITT purchase: The Second World War converted the Farnsworth and Capehart plants a second time, from consumer sets to armed-forces communication equipment. In 1949 the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation purchased the Farnsworth Television and Radio Corporation, and the works became Capehart-Farnsworth, a division of ITT. In 1954 the division was split: the Farnsworth Electronics business continued in Fort Wayne as a wholly owned ITT subsidiary, the Capehart consumer manufacturing was sold off in 1956, and ITT retained the Fort Wayne properties. The Pontiac Street campus — the address runs through the defense record for decades, as ITT Aerospace/Optical Division, 3700 East Pontiac Street, in Army technical reports of the 1970s — was the platform on which Fort Wayne's tactical-radio and space-instrument industries were built.

Sources:

1. Museum of Broadcast Communications, Capehart Corporation entry — the 1938 sale to Farnsworth Television and Radio; the wartime conversion to armed-forces communication equipment; the 1949 ITT purchase; the 1954 split and the 1956 Capehart sale; the Fort Wayne properties retained by ITT.
2. Radiomuseum.org, Capehart / Farnsworth manufacturer records — Capehart founded 1927; the March 1939 bankruptcy and Farnsworth takeover; the Farnsworth Television & Radio Corporation at 3702 E. Pontiac, Fort Wayne, general office and research laboratory, with the Marion factory.
3. U.S. Army Communications Research and Development Command technical reports (DTIC), 1978–79 — ITT Aerospace/Optical Division, 3700 East Pontiac Street, Fort Wayne, under contract to the SINCGARS-V project manager.