Scope and Content Note
The records of the Du Mont Laboratories span years 1930-1960, with the bulk of the material dated between 1945 and 1960. The collection consists of correspondence, administrative files, financial records, sales and advertising material, files relating to television and government hearings, and miscellaneous records focusing on the development and commercial use of the television cathode ray tube. Included throughout are personal papers of the Du Mont firm’s founder, Allen B. Du Mont. The collection is organized into nine series: Administrative Files, General Correspondence, Interoffice Correspondence, Financial Records, Sales and Advertising File, Production and Engineering File, Television File, Government Hearings, and Miscellany.
Early records of the laboratories reflect Allen Du Mont's efforts to develop a commercially practical cathode ray tube. Photographs, schematics, and other technical records in the Production and Engineering series and Television File document his development of the cathode ray tube from a laboratory curiosity into the practical and indispensable "eye" of television, radar, and oscillographs. Other material in these files reflects the planning and organization by Du Mont and his laboratories to apply the technology used in developing the cathode ray tube to such fields as scientific and industrial measurement and to the transmission and reception of television.
The laboratory’s corporate history is documented throughout the collection, but largest in breadth, scope, and significance are the Production and Engineering File, Television File, and Government Hearings file. Contained in these series are materials documenting the commercial application of cathode ray tubes and the growth of Du Mont's television manufacturing and broadcasting divisions. These larger series also relate to television transmission, reception, and frequency allocation, Federal Communications Commission, color television, educational television, stations, networks, programs, ratings, and profits and losses. In addition, in the Television File are materials pertaining to the 1955 division of Du Mont's television receiver manufacturing business and the merger of Allen B. Du Mont Laboratories with the Fairchild Camera and Instrument Corporation in 1960.
Prominent correspondents include Keeton Arnett, Leonard Frederick Cramer, Thomas T. Goldsmith, Austin C. Lescarboura, Mortimer W. Loewi, Ernest A. Marx, Jack Poppele, William Allerton Roberts, Irving Sarlin, Albert Steadman, Herbert E. Taylor Jr., Paul Ware, Elmer Wheeler, and C. J. Witting.