Shelby Electric Co.

In 1896, stockholders of the newly formed Shelby Electric Company purchased three acres of the Mack farm to build a factory to produce incandescent lamps. A road was built from Broadway to Gamble Street to accommodate travel by factory workers.  Businessman John Chamberlain Fish persuaded electrical engineer Prof. Adolfe Alexander Chaillet, of Paris, France, to bring his new lamp invention to Shelby. The first building to be erected was of brick, 100 x 32 feet, two stories high with a basement. The first floor contained a glass blowers’ room, vacuum pump room, store room with elevator and machine shop. A portion of the second floor was a laboratory; an additional laboratory was in the basement.  

In 1899, the company filled an order from the Treasury department for about 40,000 incandescent lamps. By 1902, the complex included several large buildings and employed nearly 900 men and women. About 1903, the National Lamp Company purchased the Shelby Electric Company.

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