Author: chrisdrain

1920 Shelby Metal products moved into a portion of the factory in 1920, taking over raw and finished material and patents of the hinge and hardware business Shelby Tractor bought from Standard Manufacturing Company.  The business quickly grew and built a new factory on North Broadway Street.

1918-1922 The Shelby Tractor & Truck Company bought the factory in 1918 and began manufacturing vehicles. Using the adjacent rail system, Shelby tractors were shipped throughout the United States and to Sweden, Denmark and Constantinople. In 1920, the town of Shelby replaced its team of horses with a Shelby tractor. Financially, the company never had… Continue reading Shelby Tractor and Truck Co.

In 1912, the General Electric Company bought National Lamp and the Shelby factory; the sales department was renamed Shelby Lamp Works. In 1915, the manufacturing end moved to Cleveland, while the sales department remained in Shelby, leaving the factory vacant.

A new division was formed in 1908 called the Richland Mazda Lamp division, which began to produce tungsten lamps.  The carbon works division was closed in 1911 to make room for the tungsten division; by 1912 it was the largest tungsten factory in the company, turning out 12,000 lamps a day.

In 1896, stockholders of the newly formed Shelby Electric Company purchased three acres of the Mack farm to build a factory to produce incandescent lamps. A road was built from Broadway to Gamble Street to accommodate travel by factory workers.  Businessman John Chamberlain Fish persuaded electrical engineer Prof. Adolfe Alexander Chaillet, of Paris, France, to… Continue reading Shelby Electric Co.