Lot # : 157 - 1941 SPARTON 642-X WOOD Cabinet TABLE TOP RADIO

SHIPPING AVAILABLE > A Sparton brand model 642-X, 1941 six tube radio featuring AM, BC, LW, SW bands, in a wooden Case measuring 10.5” (H) x 22.75” (W) x 10” (D) Inches ~ Fitted with a 110 volt cord and plug. Extremely heavy. CONDITION REPORT > Not functional ~ Lacking one knob ~ Case suffers from varying elements relative to age and material. HISTORY ~ SPARTON Brand RADIOS American electronics company Sparks-Withington Corporation f Jackson, Michigan, produced Sparton brand radios. Sparton Corporation has a century long history of manufacturing technologically advanced equipment for the transportation, electronics, communication, and defense industries. Founded at the turn of the century, Sparton has participated in many of the technological milestones of the 20th century, including the introduction of the automobile, fully electric radios, refrigeration, and television. Although since the 1960s Sparton was known primarily as a defense contractor, cuts in defense spending in the 1990s saw the company redirecting its target markets towards the commercial electronics industry. The Sparton Corporation was founded as the Withington Company in 1900 in Jackson, Michigan, by Philip and Winthrop Withington. William Sparks became the third partner in the business a few years later and the company name was changed to the Sparks-Withington Company. Sparks-Withington began as a small manufacturer of steel parts for agricultural implements but as the automobile revolution began to sweep through Michigan in the early part of the century, Sparks-Withington added steel automotive stampings like hub caps and brake drums to their product line. By 1909, the company was manufacturing car radiator cooling fan assemblies, which quickly became a major part of the company’s production output, reaching 275,000 units by 1917. It was during this period that Sparks-Withington began to make use of the trade name “Sparton,” a contraction of the company name and an evocation of the disciplined Spartans of Ancient Greece. The company’s first major product innovation came in 1911 when the all-electric car horn was developed by Sparks-Withington engineers. The Hudson Automobile Company soon adopted the Sparton electric horn as standard equipment for its automobiles, replacing the optional bulb horns that had characterized the early era of the automobile. The electric horn has remained a staple product for Sparton since its introduction. The Sparks-Withington Company was officially incorporated in Ohio in 1916 and then reincorporated in 1919 when shares in the company began to be sold on the New York Stock Exchange. After a brief period of military production during World War I, Sparks-Withington used its growing expertise in the electronics field to bring out a line of battery powered radios, followed in 1926 by production of the country’s first all-electric radio, promoted as “Radio’s Richest Voice.” While many American companies suffered during the Great Depression, Sparks-Withington expanded. In 1930, the company formed a wholly-owned Canadian subsidiary, Sparton of Canada, Ltd., to introduce the Sparton radio line in Canada. In the same year, the company acquired the Cardon-Phonocraft Company of Jackson, Michigan, and integrated their radio tubes and combination radio-phonograph products into the Sparton line. Sparks-Withington further expanded their radio accessory business with the purchase of Home Products Corp. of Michigan. In 1932, the company entered a new market with the introduction of the Sparton electric refrigerator. The intense competition in this industry was largely responsible for the company’s 1938 net loss of $60,000, however, and the company dropped the product line by the end of the decade. By the beginning of the 1940s, Sparks-Withington was operating five factories in Jackson, Michigan, in addition to their Canadian subsidiary’s facility in London, Ontario. Annual sales topped $5 million. Like most American manufacturers, Sparks-Withington switched to military production during World War II, manufacturing bomb hoists, communications equipment, magazine clips, and a wide variety of other military products for the war effort. With a return to peace, Sparks-Withington set out once again to expand its range of products. In 1945, the company acquired the Illinois-based Steger Furniture Manufacturing Co. to manufacture cabinets for the radio and radio-phonographs that had become the mainstay of the Sparton product line. Before the war Sparks-Withington engineers had experimented with the development of television receivers, and had even field tested an early model, but disagreements in implementing industry-wide standards for television compounded with the outbreak of World War II to delay the widespread introduction of television to the American public until 1948. With its electronic expertise and established brand recognition in Sparton brand radios, the company was in a good position to enter this new and potentially lucrative market. Under the Sparton trade name, Sparks-Withington began full scale production of black and white television receivers in 1948 and then introduced a color model some five years later. In 1954 the company further expanded into the communications industry by founding WWTV, a local television station in Cadillac, Michigan. Through the first 50 years of Sparks-Withington’s operations, management of the firm had remained firmly in control of the Sparks and Withington families. However, in 1950, a proxy fight led by shareholder John J. Smith culminated in the takeover of the board of directors by a new group of investors. Smith was elected president and within two years the founding families had resigned their leadership positions with the company. In keeping with the change in management and in recognition of the strength of the 30 year old trade name, in 1956 the Sparks-Withington company name was officially changed to the Sparton Corporation. By the early 1950s, radio and television sets accounted for two-thirds of Sparton sales, which had reached almost $24 million by the opening of the decade. In spite of strong sales, intense competition in the electronics industry increasingly reduced profit margins until, in 1954, Sparton was faced with a $300,000 net loss. During this same period Sparton had been slowly building up its automotive and electronic divisions through acquisitions and new product development. Most notably, Sparton engineers began a program to use the company’s expertise in radio technology to develop a sonobuoy system for the American navy. Sonobuoys—small, air-dropped listening devices used to detect and locate submarines—would prove to be one of the company’s most lucrative product lines through the following three decades. By 1956, it had become clear that the defense industry could provide better growth and higher profit margins than the highly competitive radio and television industries. Sparton made the dramatic and risky decision to discontinue all American production of the radios, televisions, and stereos, which had been the company’s largest product categories, in order to concentrate on the growing military electronics business. After posting an initial loss in the first year after the decision to drop TV and radio production, Sparton rebounded to record profit levels by the end of the decade. In addition to the expansion of the company’s military electronics division, a number of acquisitions brought Sparton into new markets. The purchase of Allied Steel and Conveyors of Detroit, Michigan, saw the company’s entry into the materials handling industry and the acquisition of the Flori and Houston Pipe Companies spelled a brief foray into steel pipe manufacturing. During the late 1950s and 1960s, Sparton also experimented with a Railway Equipment Division as well as a Controls Systems Division but both operations were discontinued after a few years of operation. Sparton’s long history in the automotive industry was consolidated in 1959 with the founding of the Sparton Manufacturing Company, which operated out of a new plant in Flora, Illinois. Sparton Manufacturing primarily produced automotive and marine horns and buzzers. By 1960 the 6,600 horns manufactured each day at the plant provided all of the horns for Studebaker cars, 65 percent of Chrysler’s, and 75 percent of American Motors’