Chicago Radio Laboratory (CRL) [Zenith Radio Corporation] of Chicago, Illinois.

Among the hundreds of radio manufacturers that arose with the popularization of radio in the very early 1920s was the Chicago Radio Laboratory (CRL) in 1918, selling radios under the name "Z-Nith," later to become Zenith Radio Corporation. From the beginning, CRL/Zenith hung its hat on quality being more important than cost, and this philosophy allowed the company to grow and prosper in the fluid environment of the 1920s. By the onset of the Depression in 1929, Zenith was stable enough to weather the financial storm and emerge as a major manufacturing and marketing force.

The 9ZN garage building--the first Chicago Radio Laboratory factory in early 1919. Half of the 14' X 18' garage, located on Chicago's lakefront at 57XX Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois (land owned by the Edgewater Brach Hotel), was used for amateur station 9ZN and the other half was devoted to radio production. The sign on the side of the building reads: "9ZN, Testing & Demonstrating, equipped with CRL apparatus."

FOUNDERS
The founders of what was to become Zenith Radio Corporation were two radio amateurs, Ralph H.G. Mathews and Karl Hassel. The two were joined in business a bit later by Eugene F. McDonald, Jr., who contributed his considerable finances, publicity skills, and inventiveness. Soon after Zenith was formed, master businessman and accountant Hugh Robertson and legendary merchandiser Paul Klugh joined the group, forming the nucleus that eventually propelled Zenith Radio Corporation to a position as a major national manufacturer.

RALPH H.G. MATHEWS
Ralph Mathews built his first amateur radio station (9IK) in Chicago in 1912, soon after becoming interested in amateur radio. While attending Chicago's Lane Technical High School in 1913 and 1914, he perfected an aluminum saw-tooth, rotary spark gap disk with such a distinctive radio signal that it could be instantly identified by his amateur contacts. Already well-known in the amateur community, he began to accept requests from other amateurs to build equipment of his own design for them. Mathews graduated from high school in 1914 and began a commercial operation in 1915 to supplement his college costs. From 1915 until 1917, when World War I stopped all amateur activity, he covered most of his college and personal expenses by building and selling saw-tooth rotary gaps, radio receivers of various kinds, and other equipment for amateur purposes.

In March 1916, Mathews was appointed trunk line manager for the central region of the U. S. for the newly formed Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL); in February 1917, he was elected to the Board of Directors for the group. About this time, his station call letters were changed to 9ZN, and with the increased prominence of the station, its operator and his call, his manufactured products became known as "9ZN Spark Gaps" or "9ZN Receivers."

Soon after the War started, Mathews enlisted in the U.S. Navy. He was assigned to the Naval Communications Division, and he met Karl Hassel while stationed at Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois.

KARL HASSEL
Karl Hassel was born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, on January 25, 1896. He attended Westminster College from 1914 to 1915 and continued his studies in 1916 at the University of Pittsburgh. He had received his amateur license in 1912 and, at Pittsburgh, operated the university's 2 K.W., 500-cycle synchronous rotary spark gap station. This very efficient station operated with a special license 8XI and had an antenna 125 feet high and 600 feet long stretched between two buildings. It operated primarily on 425 meters and could work in a large geographic area because of its high antenna.

With the beginning of World War I, the government closed all and dismantled most radio stations. However, the influential University of Pittsburgh station was reserved as a government station. Hassel was one of three operators who took and passed the government examination and operated the station on a 24-hour-a-day basis.

Several published accounts of Hassel's involvement with the Pittsburgh University station state that the station became KDKA, the first licensed broadcast station. Indeed, this story is related to several of Hassel's obituary accounts. The Pittsburgh University station was dismantled in 1918 and did not become KDKA. Some confusion may have stemmed from the similarity of calls: the Pittsburgh University station was 8XI, while Frank Conrad's call (the station that developed into KDKA) was 8XK.

In early 1918 when the university station was dismantled, Hassel joined the Navy. He became a radio code instructor at Great Lakes Naval Training Station and met Ralph Mathews. The two worked together at Great Lakes for a few months, then both were transferred to the Naval Intelligence Service offices in Chicago's Commonwealth Edison Building.

When the War ended, they were held briefly before discharge with little to do. During this time, they decided to enter into a business partnership manufacturing amateur equipment. In early 1919, after being released from the Navy, they formed a formal partnership. By June 1919, along with friends M.B. Lowe and Larry Dutton, they built amateur equipment under Chicago Radio Laboratory (CRL).

THE CHICAGO RADIO LABORATORY
Hassel and Mathews initially lived in the Mathews family home at 1316 Carmen Avenue, and their first manufacturing location was a table in the kitchen in 1918. Operating as the Chicago Radio Laboratory, they produced a catalog in mid-1919. Mathews' father was involved in a printing company and helped them with the catalog. As Hassel said, "...it didn't cost us anything, or we wouldn't have had a catalog. I'm telling you, we didn't have any money."

At first, CRL operated as a retail mail-order supplier of amateur equipment, selling a variety of non-CRL apparatus as well as its own. The equipment featured in the first catalog was not stocked but manufactured or obtained as ordered.

Karl Hassel's account of the earliest days of production was recalled as: "We used Bakelite panel, and they were all engraved by hand with many a resulting blister. We used what we thought was a unique method of mounting the various parts on the Bakelite panel so no mounting screws would show. We used a double panel with the apparatus properly mounted on the back panel, and then the front panel was held on the back one by the pointer stops. I remember how we used to get a set together and discovered we had left off something, so we had to take it apart again to mount the part on the back panel. We were often on the point of discarding this idea and letting all the mounting screws show, but we never did."

Some of Mathews' impressions of the early manufacturing days, recalled in 1978, were:

"As to how many sets we made, I cannot give you a figure. We had 3 workmen building them by hand. We built them 12 at a time, which took about 2-3 weeks. The total amount I cannot give you the. Then, as the business grew, we started building about 20 at a time.

"Due to our small hand construction, we seldom had much of a stock, but they weren't built specifically to order unless something special was specified when we would make modifications to order."

EXPANSION
In mid-1919, manufacturing operations were moved to one-half of a 14' x 18' 2-car garage erected two blocks north of the Edgewater Beach Hotel at 5525 Sheridan Road. Mr. Dewey, the hotel manager and a friend of both Mathews and Hassel, allowed the unrestricted use of the hotel-owned land to understand that the building would be removed if the hotel ever needed the property. The other half of the garage was devoted to amateur station 9ZN.

A large antenna was erected, and with the big synchronous rotary spark-gap transmitter, 9ZN was soon heard worldwide. 9ZN was part of the first postwar transcontinental message relay on December 4, 1919 ([1AW to] 9ZN to L.F. to 6EA). In January [1921], 9ZN was involved in setting the cross-country record of 6.5 minutes for a round trip message 1AW to 9ZN to 5ZA to 6JD and return on the same route with help from 9LR. 9ZN was a featured visitation site during the first National ARRL Convention held August 31-September 3, 1921, at the Edgewater Beach Hotel. Mathews was the Director General (chairman) of the convention and toastmaster of the banquet.

By early 1921, the garage on Sheridan Road had become too small, and Chicago Radio Laboratory moved to a 3,000-square-foot rented factory at 6433 Ravenswood. The primary product of Chicago Radio Laboratory was a 2-component regenerative receiver. The top portion of the receiver, called the "Amplifigon," housed the detector and amplifier, and the bottom part, the "Paragon," was a tuner. CRL acquired the names Amplifigon and Paragon from the Adams-Morgan Company after it could not receive deliveries as agents for the company. Then, CRL began building and modifying the units themselves.

Karl Hassel could not recall whether the names were purchased or given to CRL. But, in a letter to friend Leo Gibbs on December 6, 1978, Mathew's recalled, "Adams -Morgan and I had the #1 and #2 licenses under Armstrong's patents. We did not copy their set; we bought them out at almost the same time, about six months after WW I. The 'Paragon' name was more or less the name of the circuit originally. I believe they were out with their model a few months before ours, and we originally used one of theirs at 9ZN, for a short time, much for comparison purposes. I can't give you a specific date for the first CRL Paragons and Amplifigons, but it was six months to a year after I got out of the Navy active duty at the end of WWI."

There appears to have been no legal action on behalf of either party. The 1919 Chicago Radio Laboratory catalog states that CRL sells the Adams-Morgan Paragon. The Paragon name was dropped in the 1920 CRL catalogs as modifications to the original design produced a new, and exclusively CRL, rendition of the product.

Since its equipment was built for the radio amateur, CRL placed its earliest advertisements in QST, the American Radio Relay League magazine, the first in June 1919. At an employee's suggestion, the QST advertisements soon began listing the 9ZN call followed by a small "ith," thus providing the famous trade name Z-Nith.

However, with the development of CRL's first broadcast receiver, the company began placing limited advertising in Chicago newspapers and a few trade publications. Growth, the associated moves to larger quarters, and the arrival of Commander McDonald combined at precisely the right time to lay a solid foundation for the rapid development of the fledgling company.

By late 1921, the popularity of Chicago Radio Laboratory equipment had driven demand to levels that were impossible to support from the small CRL factory on Ravenswood Avenue. In early 1922, Eugene F. McDonald, Jr., who had joined Mathews and Hassel in 1920 as General Manager of CRL, arranged for QRS Music Company at Kedzie Avenue and 48th Street to begin manufacturing CRL products. QRS was to use a combination of its own equipment and employees and those of CRL.

CRL produced only five radios a week in early 1922; by June 1922, it had 50 per week. Since radio sales and manufacturing were cyclical, with the peak period being September to January, a manufacturing output of 50 radios in June would indicate phenomenal growth for the small company.

McDonald formed Zenith Radio Corporation on June 30, 1923, as the marketing arm for the Z-Nith radios produced by Chicago Radio Laboratory. It was not until several years later that the two merged so that both manufacturing and marketing could be carried out by Zenith Radio Corporation. The original patent for the famous Zenith Lightning Bolt was filed on April 24, 1922.

TELEVISION PIONEER
Early television developments included some of the first prototype television receivers in the 1930s and experimental T.V. broadcasts, which began in 1939 and, at the request of the FCC, continued during World War II.

In 1948, Zenith introduced its first line of black-and-white T.V. sets. Among the many pioneering Zenith developments in the early days of television were the industry's first 21-inch, three-electron-gun rectangular color picture tube (1954), the first wireless T.V. remote control, "Flash-Matic" (1955) and then "Space Command," the first ultrasonic remote control, which revolutionized T.V. tuning worldwide for the next quarter-century (1956).

Zenith introduced its first color T.V. sets for consumers in 1961 and quickly established itself as a leading brand. The 1969 introduction of the revolutionary "Chromacolor" black-matrix (negative guardband) picture tube doubled the image brightness of color television and established a new standard of performance for the entire industry. The "EFL" (extended field length) electron gun (1976) and "System 3" modular T.V. chassis (1978) contributed to Zenith's continued strength in color television during the 1970s.

From "ZENITH RADIO" TO "ZENITH ELECTRONICS"
Mounting competitive pressures in its core consumer electronics business-led, Zenith used its broad engineering and marketing expertise to diversify as the company entered the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) components and cable television products businesses in the late 1970s.

In 1979, Zenith acquired the Heath Company, the world's largest manufacturer of build-it-yourself electronic kit products for hobbyists. Capitalizing on Heath's early entry into personal computers, Zenith formed Zenith Data Systems in 1980. Zenith's management built the computer business into a billion-plus-dollar operation by the late 1980s and sold the company in 1989.

By the mid-1980s, Zenith Cable Products (known as Zenith Network Systems) was a leading supplier of set-top boxes to the cable industry and a pioneer in cable modem technologies. The 1990s saw this business evolve into a supplier of digital set-top boxes for wired and wireless networks, and Zenith sold the Network Systems division in 2000.

The company marketed its last radio in 1982 (among other things, the end of the line for the famous Zenith "Trans-Oceanic" multi-band radio). Even as the company changed its name from "Zenith Radio Corporation" to "Zenith Electronics Corporation" in 1984, Zenith remained committed to audio engineering related to television. Zenith engineers co-developed the multichannel television sound (MTS) transmission system adopted by the industry for stereo T.V. broadcasts (1984). They received an Emmy (1986) for pioneering work developing MTS stereo T.V.

A major Zenith advance of the 1980s was the patented "flat tension mask" technology for high-resolution color video displays with perfectly flat screens, glare-free viewing, and superior performance, which earned the company a technical Emmy in 2001. Other noteworthy Zenith television innovations include T.V. receivers with "Sound by Bose" (1986) and "Dolby Surround Sound" (1988), as well as the first T.V.s with built-in closed caption decoders (1991), the first T.V.s with built-in on-screen electronic program guide (1994), and the first T.V.s with a track-ball operated remote control (1995).

DIGITAL HIGH-DEFINITION TELEVISION
Beginning in 1988, Zenith has been a leader in HDTV technologies. As one of HDTV's earliest proponents, Zenith developed several key digital technologies. Zenith was the first to propose a partially digital signal, pioneered the so-called "taboo" broadcast channels for the transition to HDTV, and was the first to use computer-friendly progressive scanning.

Zenith developed the VSB (vestigial sideband) digital transmission system, adopted in December 1996 by the FCC as the centerpiece of the ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) digital television broadcast standard. In 1997, Zenith and other Digital HDTV Grand Alliance members earned a technical Emmy for pioneering developments behind the ATSC standard.

Zenith's first HDTV products, digital HDTV receivers/decoders, were introduced in 1998, followed by integrated Digital HDTV sets in 1999 and HD-compatible monitors in 2000. Zenith introduced the world's first 60-inch HDTV plasma display panel in 2001 and more affordable direct-view integrated HDTVs in 2002. Zenith digital-to-analog converter boxes supported the U.S. transition to all-digital broadcasting in 2008-09.

Compiled by Dr. Neil Gale, Ph.D.