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DuMont Laboratories was an American television equipment manufacturer. The company was founded in 1931, in Upper Montclair, New Jersey, by inventor Allen B. DuMont. Among the company's developments were durable cathode ray tubes that would be used for TV. Another product was a DuMont invention, the magic eye tube.
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History
In 1938, the company began manufacturing TVs at a factory in nearby Passaic, New Jersey. To sell TVs, DuMont began the DuMont Television Network in 1946, one of the earliest TV networks. Later, they manufactured cameras and transmitters for TV. DuMont equipment was known for its high quality. The main CRT factory was in Clifton, NJ. It made black and white TV tubes as well as instrumentation and military fire control tubes in the early 1950s.
In 1956, DuMont shuttered the network and sold what remained of his TV operations to John Kluge, who renamed the network Metromedia. DuMont's partner, Thomas T. Goldsmith, remained on Metromedia's board of directors until the stations were sold to the Fox Television Stations Group. Nearly every original DuMont Television program is considered lost, and presumed destroyed. Only roughly 100 recordings of any DuMont series have been recovered.
DuMont sold his TV manufacturing division to Emerson Radio in 1958, and sold the remainder of the company to Fairchild Camera in 1960. Fairchild later developed semiconductor microchips. Robert Noyce, founder of Intel, originally worked for DuMont as an engineer.
DuMont TVs outside the US were assembled under license in Montreal, Quebec, Canada by Canadian Aviation Electronics, currently a manufacturer of flight simulator and pilot training equipment.
Name ownership
On April 18, 2012, a US federal trademark registration was filed for the name "DuMont" by Alan Levan of Cabin John, Maryland. The description provided to the United States Patent and Trademark Office for it is "Antennas for radio, for television; Electrical and optical cables; Electronic and optical communications instruments and components".