Brush Development Company was a manufacturer of
audio
Audio most commonly refers to sound, as it is transmitted in signal form. It may also refer to:
Sound
*Audio signal, an electrical representation of sound
*Audio frequency, a frequency in the audio spectrum
*Digital audio, representation of sound ...
,
phonograph
A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...
ic products and
magnetic recording
Magnetic storage or magnetic recording is the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetisation in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is ac ...
technologies located in
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
. It was absorbed into
Clevite in
1952
Events January–February
* January 26 – Black Saturday in Egypt: Rioters burn Cairo's central business district, targeting British and upper-class Egyptian businesses.
* February 6
** Princess Elizabeth, Duchess of Edinburgh, becomes ...
.
History
The business was founded in 1919 by Alfred L. Williams as Brush Labs to develop products that utilized
piezoelectric
Piezoelectricity (, ) is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid materials—such as crystals, certain ceramics, and biological matter such as bone, DNA, and various proteins—in response to applied mechanical stress. The word ...
crystals.
Associates spun off the Brush Development Company in 1930 with piezoelectric phonograph pickups as its main product.
[http://www.audiotools.com/dead_b.html Audiotools: Defunct Audio Manufacturers] Later it began manufacturing
wire recorders,
microphone
A microphone, colloquially called a mic or mike (), is a transducer that converts sound into an electrical signal. Microphones are used in many applications such as telephones, hearing aids, public address systems for concert halls and public ...
s, and
speakers
Speaker may refer to:
Society and politics
* Speaker (politics), the presiding officer in a legislative assembly
* Public speaker, one who gives a speech or lecture
* A person producing speech: the producer of a given utterance, especially:
** I ...
.
During World War II, Vice President for Research Dr. Semi Joseph Begun was awarded a contract from the US National Defense Research Council for research on a substitute for stainless steel wire used in wire recorders by the military.
Post-war, Brush manufactured a dictation recorder in 1946, and released the first USA built tape recorder in 1947 with the Brush Soundmirror. In 1950, Brush built the Model BL-206 and BL-216 Multichannel Oscillographs, and associated Model BL-932 DC Amplifiers.
In 1952 Brush Development Company merged with the original Brush Labs and the Cleveland Graphite Bronze company to create
Clevite. Audio products continued to be sold under the Brush
trademark
A trademark (also written trade mark or trade-mark) is a type of intellectual property consisting of a recognizable sign, design, or expression that identifies products or services from a particular source and distinguishes them from others ...
until 1960.
The Clevite company was absorbed by
Gould-National Batteries in 1969.
[{{cite web, title=BRUSH DEVELOPMENT CORP. - The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, url=http://ech.case.edu/cgi/article.pl?id=BDC, publisher=Case Western Reserve University, accessdate=6 December 2012]
References
Sources
*Gerard M. Foley. personal recollections of work sponsored at Battelle Memorial Institute by Brush 1943-1945.
Manufacturing companies based in Cleveland