FROM CARRIAGES TO CROSSBARS
Rochester’s Oldest Manufacturing Concern Moves with the Times
Through a Variety of Product Lines
James Cunningham Son & Company, of Rochester, N.Y., is a closely held firm that for 123 years has maintained a conservative tradition of high quality in a dozen different manufacturing enterprises, yet has also had the managerial acumen and adaptability to concentrate always on a product well suited both to their om resources and to the particular needs of a given industrial era.
What has kept them financially sound even in the worst of times - and flourishing in others - is thus not a unique manufacturing process or any special manufacturing know-how, facilities, or equipment, but simply a keen marketing sense capable of spotting likely contemporary outlets for the company’s productive energies.
Few now have long enough memories to recall the famous Cunningham carriages of the nineteenth century. More will remember, with respect and nostalgia, the distinguished Cunningham motor cars of pre—depression years. Both vehicles are now, perhaps unhappily, a part of history, but the same high quality formerly built into Cunningham cars and carriages is still maintained in the production of Cunningham crossbar switches, a highly important specialized device used in electronic equipment in the aircraft and missile, automation, data processing, computer, and other industries.
James Cunningham Son & Company was founded in 1838 when James Cunningham, who had come to Rochester from Ireland, by way of Canada, bought out his partner in a small carriage-making establishment known as Kerr and Cunningham. The company prospered and fifty years later had become one of the largest carriage builders in the world.
Toward the turn of the century, the founders grandsons, F.E.Cunningham and A.J.Cunningham began manufacturing automobiles. The earliest models were known as assembled cars: transmissions, axles, radiators, starters, etc., were procured from special manufacturers and assembled in, on, and under the superbly made bodies, which were, of course, the Cunninghams’ chief interest as carriage makers. Later, like other automobile manufacturers, the company made nearly all of its own parts, including the first V—8 engine in this country.
Cunningham remained in the automobile business - as a select, high- quality concern - f or over thirty years, turning out an average of only BOO cars annually, many of them elegant custom models priced at $5,000 to $15,000 - in pre-1929 do1lars The years after 1929 all but wiped out this business.
In 1927, a subsidiary, the Cunningham Hall Aircraft Corporation embarked on the manufacture of comniercial and military planes. The fortunes of this enterprise were, in the thirties, erratic, and the Cunningham brothers turned their hands to a number of other products in the depression years. Notable among these was a new type of armored tank with lightweight rubber-block tracks and flexible rubber sealed bearings which enabled it to attain the hitherto unheard of speed of 50 mph over open country. Other depression ventures were the manufacture of safety belts for aircraft and diving helmets.
For the military, at various times, Cunningham has produced a variety of equipment in addition to the tank mentioned above: gun carriages in the Civil War; balloon windlasses and ambulances in World War I; aircraft actuators and gun-turret control mechanisms for U.S. fighters and bombers in World War II.
After the war, the company pioneered in the production of small gasoline-powered farm and garden machines and for a time produced Pulman-type toilets and bathtubs for trailers. When larger firms entered the mass production of these products, Cunningham withdrew.
For the past eight years Cunningham’s principal business has been the manufacture of crossbar switches and switching systems based upon a design developed by their chief engineer, Mr. Andrew Vincent. A crossbar switch is an array of many electrical switches so inter—connected as to make possible the closing of any one of hundreds of circuits randomly selected by application to the switch of “pulses” of electrical energy. An early form of the switch was used in the Bell Telephone System’s original dial-telephone equipment, in which the action of dialing produced “bursts” of pulses which permitted the switch to select the circuit appropriate to the address dialed.
Mr. Vincent’s improved design, which permits more perfect switching at much higher speeds, over a longer operating life opened up a wide variety of more demanding applications. With this switch it is possible to perform highly complex control and measurement operations on a very large number of electrical circuits, in conjunction with modern computer and instrumentation circuitry of the type used in missile check-out systems, industrial processing machinery, automation devices, accounting mechanisms ,etc.
Pratt and Whitney use the switch for automatic machine tool control. General Electric employs it as a high—speed inspection device for printed circuit manufacture. Texas Instrument tests their transistors with it. Philco, IBM, and others use it in their giant computers. Broadcasters use it to switch from camera to camera in video studio programming. Eastman Kodak and Minneapolis-Honeywell employ it in data recording processes. Oil and power companies use it to integrate information in critical process instrumentation and control systems. It is used in many missile and missile defense programs.
Cunningham’s plant is still a small one, employing fewer than 100 people - engineers, machinists, inspectors, and tool makers, as well as office help. But a steadily growing demand for its product indicates continuous expansion. A proposed new plant, to be located in the environs of Rochester, will provide approximately 30,000 square feet of space. Sales for 1960 promise to double those of 1959 and 1961 should increase over 1960 in the same proportion.
Originally Published by the James Cunningham Co. in 1960.