Magnavox — the consumer decades

1930 – 1980s

The arrival, dated three ways: The Magnavox Company — founded in California in 1917 by Edwin Pridham and Peter L. Jensen, the co-inventors of the moving-coil loudspeaker — moved its manufacturing to Fort Wayne at the turn of the 1930s. The History Center's account dates the move to 1930; Indianapolis Monthly's history says the company arrived in 1931; the published history of Magnavox's government division dates the relocation to 1932, made, its review records, to be closer to the city's copper mills — the magnet-wire trade of the entry above was part of the draw. The dates stand as their sources give them. Magnavox's Fort Wayne home included the Bueter Road plant that Alvin M. Strauss had designed for Capehart-Farnsworth. Its company profile sits in the Business record; the technology story is what follows.

What Fort Wayne made: Radios first, then the television age: the plant turned out Magnavox radios, phonographs and console televisions for the national market, and the History Center's account singles out the 1950 Brittany, a 21-inch set with the largest picture tube then available, manufactured in Fort Wayne. But the balance of the Fort Wayne works shifted early: by 1952, the History Center records, the Government & Industrial division had taken over the majority of the Fort Wayne workforce, in some 318,000 square feet of manufacturing and engineering floor space. From the 1950s onward, Fort Wayne's Magnavox was principally a defense company that also made consumer electronics — the defense half of the story is told in the Magnavox Electronic Systems entry below.

The departure: North American Philips acquired Magnavox in 1974. The consumer operations did not stay: less than a decade later Philips had moved them to Tennessee, Indianapolis Monthly records, consolidating consumer electronics around Knoxville and Greeneville, and the Magnavox name survives as a licensed brand. What Philips kept in Fort Wayne was the defense group. The city's Magnavox century therefore runs under two names — the consumer company that left in the early 1980s, and the defense company that never did.

Sources:

1. Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana (ACGSI), Magnavox page, drawing on the History Center and on Daniel Aldred and David Peterson, Magnavox Government and Industrial Electronics Company, 1951–1991: A Legacy of Pride and Excellence (2017) — the 1932 relocation and the copper mills; the Bueter Road plant; the Brittany set of 1950; the 1952 division majority and floor space.
2. The History Center, "90 Fun Facts" (2011) — Magnavox moved to Fort Wayne in 1930.
3. Indianapolis Monthly, "How the World's First Home Gaming System Was Made in Indiana" (2022) — the 1931 arrival; the 1974 Philips purchase; the consumer operations' move to Tennessee less than a decade later.
4. Magnavox, company record — the 1917 California founding by Pridham and Jensen; manufacturing moved to Fort Wayne by the 1930s.