Electronic tube pioneers

When ‘crystal sets’ were improved with the aid of vacuum tubes, the real importance of the radio began. Bill Eitel and Jack McCullough had been working in San Francisco for a tube manufacturing company, Heintz and Copeland, but it wasn’t long before the two inventors were proficient enough to improve on the basic model of the radio tubes and the two were eager to go into business for themselves.

They realized that their future was in the production of their own tubes, so in the early ’30s these two local radio-operator amateurs, "hams” as they were called, created a vacuum tube manufacturing business in San Bruno, headquartered in a vacant store at 592 San Mateo Ave. In 1934, EiMac was born after convincing San Bruno tennis star and businessman Bradshaw Harrison to bankroll the venture. Harrison hustled and got San Franciscan Walter Preddy to go in for half of the $5,000 needed to get started.

This seed money proved to be the investment of their lives. The company started on a shoestring with Eitel, McCullough and one employee in one room at the 592 San Mateo Ave. location, but it was enough space for the early production venture into radio tubes considering they had no orders at the time. The equipment for their beginning business was made from materials found at the local junkyard.

At an amateur radio get-together in Fresno, the first showing of their handmade radio tubes created interest, but more work was needed to keep the glass from cracking. After this flaw was corrected, orders began coming in from radio operators for two or three tubes a week. A second employee was added by the end of the year. The new radio "toy” of the masses was catching on, turning up the volume, and business started booming.

By 1937, more than a dozen employees were working to keep up with orders, and the company expanded to a 5,000-square-foot office at the corner of San Mateo and San Bruno avenues (site of an auto dealership now). In 1939, the tubes were mostly handmade. An order for 40 or 50 of their tubes caused the 17-man production line to whistle in amazement.

Even more amazing, with the threat of war in July 1940, EiMac received a contract from Western Electric for 10,000 tubes to use with the newly developing communication networks and radio equipment.

A completely new approach was needed, as well as more space to do the work, and EiMac tooled up to a modern shop to complete the orders. The working staff increased tenfold. Thousands of workers were recruited in the following years as the orders increased after 1941 and three shifts of workers were needed to keep up. Eitel and McCullough, living in San Bruno now, instructed their personnel office to do something very few companies were doing.

EiMac began hiring women from San Bruno and the surrounding area, tapping a new workforce pool. Summer day school for children of working women, as well as a nursery school for preschool children, were set up. An employee newspaper, EiMac News, was started and published every Friday. The American Legion on San Mateo Avenue hosted swing-shift dances and business in the city was brisk due to increased workers.

Space on First Avenue was gobbled up as fast as Eddie Bou and other carpenters could build and expand the facilities. They were working around the clock to satisfy the demand. A completely new second EiMac facility was built in Salt Lake City to increase production of the vacuum tubes. In August 1942, the first Army -Navy ‘E’ award was presented to EiMac, the first of its kind given to an electronic-tube industry in the United States.

The end of the war decreased the need for the radio and radar tubes EiMac manufactured, and the company directed its efforts toward the development of another new and upcoming industry need - television tubes. Continuous expansion and lack of space in the San Bruno area around First and San Bruno avenues forced the company to move to San Carlos in 1958. Before the old buildings could be torn down, a spectacular nighttime fire reduced them to rubble.

In 1965 EiMac merged with Varian Associates, and the company name that memorialized its founders disappeared from print, but not from the memories of the many San Brunans who were associated with this company.

Rediscovering the Peninsula appears in the Monday edition of the Daily Journal.