Henry C. and Cora B. Gates founded the Gates Radio &
Supply Company in 1922 in the kitchen pantry of
their apartment in Quincy, Ill., primarily to create
a job for their son, Parker S. Gates, who was only
15 years old at the time. He began by selling
crystal radios to friends and neighbors in the
community
Gates Radio & Supply Company soon became a serious enterprise, and
Parker’s father quit his job to head the family
business, which they moved into a second floor
commercial space in downtown Quincy.
Two more moves to increasingly larger factory space
took place in the 1930s. In the middle of that
decade, Gates built one of the industry’s first
audio consoles and introduced its first AM
transmitter, the 250 Watt model 100A. Gates
purchased a larger factory located on the
Mississippi River in Quincy in 1945, and then in
1953 constructed an even larger building. By the
1950s, Gates Radio had become one of the country’s
principal radio equipment suppliers and a major
provider of audio consoles, turntables, AM, FM and
shortwave radio transmitters and accessories. It
also made its first forays into the new field of
television at that time. In December 1957, Harris
Intertype Corp., a lithography and typesetting
conglomerate that was making its first venture into
the field of electronics, acquired the company.
Parker Gates stayed on as the president of the
division, which gradually phased in the Harris name
and is today known as Harris Broadcast
Communications. |
