Kent Quits

On the society page of the Philadelphia Evening Ledger one day last week appeared this note: "Mr. & Mrs. A. Atwater Kent and their son, A. Atwater Kent Jr., of West Hills, Ardmore, will leave for Bar Harbor the latter part of the month to occupy their place, Sonogee, for the summer."

On the same day on the front page of the Philadelphia Record appeared a story which Radio Weekly declared ''bore intimations of the most sensational news, in all likelihood, that has ever broken the macabre radio industry." The news was that A. (for Arthur) Atwater Kent was getting out of radio for good. Laconic, the official announcement was merely that "Atwater Kent Manufacturing Co. has decided to be less active in radio lines and has so informed its distributors." But it was learned that all the company's radio production had ceased, that sales were solely from sets on hand. "Mr. Kent is known to view the possibility of profitable operation in radio very dubiously," explained Radio Weekly, "and, as the possessor of a large personal fortune, he is believed to be preparing for a period of rest and recreation."

Once the largest maker of radios in the U. S., Atwater Kent is the personal property of its ingenious founder. During its peak year, 1929, it turned out nearly 1,000,000 sets, and its total sales were supposed to have been $60,000,000. At that time Mr. Kent was certainly not dubious about the profit possibilities of radio. He rushed a tremendous addition to the plant on Philadelphia's Wissahickon Avenue, starting production in it before the cornerstone was officially dedicated. Visitors were awed by Atwater Kent's luxurious general offices, dumfounded when they peeked through a special window to watch solid gold bars dissolving in acid to supply 14 carat plating for the Atwater Kent trade mark. "Mr. Kent," it was briefly explained, "ordered it."

Atwater Kent payrolls listed 12,000 workers when the bottom dropped out of the stockmarket as well as the radio market. Lately the number has been 800, mostly workers subject to call when jobs were available.

Born 62 years ago in Burlington, Vt., where his father was a physician, Arthur Atwater Kent was sent to Worcester (Mass.) Polytechnic Institute on the strength of his youthful preoccupation with electrical and mechanical gadgets. After graduation he worked for a little New Hampshire tool company. In Philadelphia in 1902 he set himself up as a maker of batteries, battery testers and intercommunicating telephone systems. His first plant was in a loft where the floor cracks were so wide that he never needed a dustpan.

After three years Mr. Kent was able to buy a one-cylinder automobile, "not being married and not having to conserve cash," he explains. From the ignition trouble in that car dates the rise of Kent. Develop ing an ignition system of his own, which earned him a Franklin Institute award in 1914, he proceeded to make Atwater Kent synonymous with good electrical equipment on the pre-War U. S. automobile. Self-starters and lighting systems followed logically. By 1917 Atwater Kent was big enough to get special Army orders for precision war tools like fuse setters, machine-gun sights.

Atwater Kent radios originated one day after the War when Mr. Kent received an order for 10,000 headsets. Suddenly realizing that his plant was virtually ready to turn out complete radios instead of certain parts for other companies, he built a set by hand in his attic. Upshot was that for the next few years Atwater Kent was the fastest-selling radio on the market. Mr. Kent contributed little to radio science. Indeed, in 1927 he settled a whopping suit brought by Radio Corp. of America for patent infringement. What he did give the industry was mass production. And he also showed the industry how to use radio ballyhoo. Atwater Kent was the first great radio impresario, signing up 25 opera stars for a series of Sunday broadcasts in 1925.

Meantime Mr. Kent did not neglect his social life. In 1906 he married a Philadelphia socialite named Mabel Lucas, who is a good friend of old Mrs. Edward Townsend Stotesbury. For years the Kents have been going to Bar Harbor every summer, to Palm Beach every winter. Kent yachts ply all the waters from Maine to Florida. The Kent garages must be big enough to hold a score of cars, for Mr. Kent dislikes driving the same car two days in succession. He used to buy them second hand, tinker them himself.

Philadelphia is still clucking over the days when Mr. Kent, Clarence Henry Geist (United Gas Improvement) and the late John T. Dorrance (Campbell Soup) had a baseball team of marriageable daughters between them. In the competitive spending which the launching of these nine young women entailed, the Dorrance triumph was a "Jungle Ball" in Philadelphia's Bellevue-Stratford hotel, where the ballroom was realistically decorated with coconut palms, tanks of tropical fish, a menagerie of monkeys, apes, bears, snakes and hundreds of birds singing in cages hung from the ceiling. Utilitarian Geist's big play was a party on his suburban estate, where 20 acres were converted into a "Versailles Garden" with electric stars in the shrubs. Mr. Kent waited until summer, then gave not one but two balls simultaneously in Bar Harbor. One was on a yacht, the other on shore. Flower-decked launches carried the guests back & forth. Mr. Kent's daughters, Elizabeth and Virginia, are both married.

Suave, affable, approachable but highly individualistic, A. Atwater Kent thinks the New Deal is a dreadful blight. Some observers believed that his decision to close down last week originated in his dislike of doing business under the Roosevelt Administration. A more logical explanation was that Mr. Kent was simply tired of the radio industry. If he does not begin manufacturing something else, he can settle down for good to enjoy what he once called "the simple life, on a grand scale."

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