"Owensboro is the home of Ken-Rad, the South's only manufacturer of electric lamp bulbs and radio tubes. Daily capacity is 30,000 lamps and 85,000 tubes."
Obviously, this is an older postcard. I read that the building was destroyed within the last 5-6 years. Does anyone have any more info on this one?
I would like to see a much higher resolution image of this postcard because it displays two buildings which are possibly geographically separated by some distance. The building in the small insert is porobably the first lamp plant opened in 1899 and demolished in 2007. The title underneath is barely readable. It was located at 817 J.R. Miller Boulevard, Owensbro. (Co-Ords 37 46' 06"N, 87 06' 28"W) Another, similar contemporary building still stands just to the south and was possibly of similar design. (Three Storeys, red brick, arched windows).
ReplyDeleteIt became Ken-Rad in 1921 and the lamp divison was sold to Westinghouse in 1943. The Electron Tube/Thermionic Valve department was sold to General Electric at around the same time. Three other plants operated under the Ken-Rad name opening around 1925 in the nearby cities of Bowlling Green and Tell City, both in Kentucky and Huntingburg, to the north in Indiana.
The site is now a park, called "Germantown Park". This is where the first lamp plant was set up, the "Kentucky Electric Lamp Co., in 1899.
Thermionic valves were not produced until 1922, but not sure if any were made on this site, possibly only between 1922 and 1925 when they were moved out to the three other sites.
Globecollector, Hobart, Tasmania.
Hey Anonymous, thanks for the info! Actually, BlogSpot won't let me put up higher res pics at this point unless I pay for more storage on the blog.
ReplyDeleteThis is some great info though, and I appreciate you sharing it here! I still get a lot of hits on my blog from people searching for info on this place.
Hello Jimerado,
ReplyDeleteYes I went searching around and found a higher res picture on another site. If you simply drag and drop this picture into Google Images, it will search the while internet....in seconds and find any duplicates.
The insert picture is the lamp plant and the main picture is the Thermionic Valve/Electron Tube plant. Actually I have a few of its valves (a 25Z5 and a 6B7) on my bench as I write this, sadly none of the lamps though and that's what I collect.
After I made the above post I did some more scratching about and found that these two buildings are just a block apart. The Ken Rad name was actually registered in 1925 but valve production started four years earlier. The valve division was sold to G.E. a little later, in 1951 or 52. In the 1980's, I think 1986, G.E. had to divest itself of this plant because of Federal Government Anti Trust Laws.
The Plant still stands today and it still bears the name G.E. gave it, Microwave Products Division. I assume it makers Magnetrons and Klystrons now, but it made Television Picture Tubes during the '70's and '80's.
The western side of the block faces J,R. Miller Boulevard with the Owensbro Police Station opposite and the eastern side faces onto Mosley Street. The front entrance is north facing on East 6th Street and East 11th Street passes across the southern side. The one building still standing on the "German Town" park block to the north is attached to the main complex by a covered-in foot bridge over East 6th Street just est of the traffic lights with J,W. Miller Boulevard.
The Co-Ordinates for the approximate centre of the complex are...
37 Deg 46' 01.3"N, 87Deg 06' 26.4"W.
In decimal this is...
37.767031, -87.107327
If you copy and paste these into
the upper right set of data entry boxes below the map on this page...
http://itouchmap.com/latlong.html
...click the "Show Point" soft button below the entry boxes, a blue marker will appear at the centre of the site. You can use the slide bar at the left side of the map to zoom down for a higher res look.
The Postcard photograph was taken from the North over J.R. Miller Boulevard, pretty much right in front of the lamp plant, but looking in a south-south-east direction, bearing 165 Deg.
Globe Collector, Hobart, Tasmania