Motorola Inc. This is where your TV was made! Franklin Park, IL
 

If you are familar with Motorola TV's then you are also familar with the address you see on the back or sticker of just about any pre 1975 motorola consumer product (TV radio, phono.) "Motorola Inc. 9401 W. Grand Ave Franklin Park, IL"

This is the main assembly plant that I visited today, May 5, 2007. The plant is still up and standing but will soon be rehabed into "The Grand Lofts" as you can see in the sign up on the front office of the plant. So the building will not be demolished, just turned into living space. I suggest you visit thegrandlofts.com and you can read a brief history of what this building was all about. Franklin Park is still a very nice suburb, mostly industrial like most of Chicago.
The plant on Grand Ave is only a couple miles west of chicago. In the beginning photos you see the Front main office of the plant. Next you see the NW sides of the plant. As the photo progress, I take photos as I walk south on Edington St. untill I get to the south side of the plant, then I walk east taking photos of the south side, water tower and then walk north on the east side of the plant, untill I finish at the north end. Take a good look at the water tower photos. You can see what once read "QUASAR" on the tower through the rust. You can tell it was even painted over at one time too. Throughout all this photo shooting, I did not see the motorola logo or anything to do with motorola or quasar anywhere inside or outside of the building other than what you can see on the water tower.
I went to an estate sale on Odell st. in chicago today which brought me close to the Motorola plant. I just happened to find a Box for a vintage Motorola quasar color TV in the basement. No TV, but the box was cool and took it. In the living room was a mid 80's quasar TV. I would be willing to bet that the people who lived in that home worked at the motorola plant.
Heres the description for each of the 46 photos, Enjoy:
Photo 1: Front View (North end) of Motorola Office at 9401 W. Grand Ave.
photo 2: West side of office
photo 3: SW side of office
photo 4: NW side of plant. (The office is attached and part of the plant)
photo 5: Office and employee enterance, NW side of plant
photo 6: inside view through window at NW side.
photo 7: west side of plant
photo 8-12: Inside view of plant through auxillary door on west side. Each photo is a different view continuing to the south
photo 13-14: SW side of plant
photo 15: View looking NE
photo 16: Inside view through SW enterance looking N.
photo 17: South end, loading docks nearest the west
photo 18: South end, loading docks, nearest the east
photo 19-20: Inside view through loading dock overhead door.
photo 21-22: Water Tower NE side
photo 23: SE end of building
photo 24: Water tower, west side
photo 25: SE end of building
photo 26: Water tower, SW end
photo 27: Water tower, West end
photo 28: Inside view of building through door window on SE end of plant
photo 29: E side, looking SW
photo 30-31: Mechanical Room, view through door on E side.
photo 32: NE end of building
photo 33: E view of office and plant
photo 34: E end of office
photo 35: NE end of plant
photo 36: Parking, under office, looking to the west.
photo 37: NE end of office
photo 38-39: N end, front Main enterance
photo 40: Sign in front of building, looking to the west
photo 41: Intersection of Grand Ave+ Edington St looking NW.
photo 42: NE end, looking SE off Edington St.
photo 43: NW end at Grand and Edington st.
photo 44: Grand and Edington looking E
photo 45: Front of building
photo 46: Front of building with a Motorola color TV box found at an estate sale just down the street from the plant!

Doug -

Great pictures and a great story too. I've got a Motorola B/W console from the mid-1960's. It was interesting to see the building where it was built.

Thanks!

Jim

Great pictures Doug!
Can't you just imagine the assembly lines that were in that space cranking out all those TVs!

Their history site says about the VT-71: "More than 100,000 units sold in one year"

Thanks for all the fine pix of the place where I used to work!

That building used to have a visible crack running diagonally across the upper south corner of the east side - and a corresponding crack through the floor in the men's room - I felt a little apprehensive using the last stall - but apparently it still hasn't fallen off.

The water tower must have had the Quasar logo painted over a long time ago. When Matsushita bought out the Motorola consumer products division, they painted "Quasar" two or three times around the water tower - but the painters got the wrong orientation, and from the HQ building it looked like
"sar Qua". They repainted it in a couple of days, just in time for the press party.

My gawd. Someone who worked there is on this board. Somebody who actually worked in a tv factory. I hope they remove your head when you die, and save it in a jar like on futurerama. Oh to hear your memories!

Who in the world is going to want to live there? I mean, is housing space so limited?:scratch2:

I just drove by there on Friday morning, I never new it was where Motorola built there Quasar TVs. Motorola had a TV plant in my home town of Quincy, Ill that was open for all of maybe 4 years before it was closed when Quasar was sold off. Now parts of the factory there make up warehousing for local business and I think some Harris Broadcasting office space.

BTW, I almost went to go work for Panasonic next door to the building on Grand Ave, by the railroad tracks. It was Panasonics industrial unit that made pick and place circuit board assymblers. Looks like Panasonic had invested alot of money there before moving out. Now come to think about it i vaguely remember a Quasar wherehouse near the back of the complex.

The nice thing about this remodel job is they aren't demolishing the building, like they did down the street on 25th and North Avenue where the old Zenith TV plant was. Its sad to think about all the manufacturing jobs that have disappeared around here over the past 10~20 years.
- Mike

Wow pioneernut, Quincy is your hometown?? very cool. That's where I lived before moving to MN. Quincy is a great town for people interested in Broadcast Equipment and Engineering, as both Harris and Broadcast Electronics have manufacturing facilities there, and there's a third company called Glenayre Electronics (formerly Quintron) that builds switching and head end equipment for the telephone industry.

The former Motorola facility in Quincy, is now a distribution warehouse for K-Mart, and there are a few businesses and if I recall correctly even a gourmet restaurant that occupy the office space.

Wow what a small world. My whole family still lives there, great small town. I try to get back there about once a month so the Grandparents get some time with our son. About 10 years ago I met my wife here in the Chicago area, with her family here I and my job, I can't really move back. Not sure when you lived there, but I used to work at Music World back in 87~89', thats where I got my addiction to all things Pioneer ;) Its also where I got my disdain for Bose :D

- Mike

Yea, it really is a small world. Unfortunately I was there like 10 years after you left. Do you recall the RF Communications Technology program that Harris had in cooperation with JWCC? I attended and graduated from there. It was a great program. I wish they hadn't ended up killing it off :(

Did you work there when the PBS documentary was being filmed? I couldn't believe some of what the employees had to put up with! :sigh:

Actually, yes, I remeber a coworker was in the program back around 87' if memory serves me correctly. He probably graduated around 88' Unfortunately, I can't remember his name. I officially left Quincy in 89' when I went off to college.
- Mike

Motorola had an older factory on 4545 Augusta Blvd. in Chicago, I assume they closed this plant when they moved to Franklin Park. I was there about a year ago and it was now a seating company. It's nice to see that it is still something related to manufacturing instead of lofts.
This was where my Motorola UHF converter was made. I belive this plant was used until the mid 1950s?

If you are intersted, there is a picture of the factory in its present state on the second page of this thread:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=82229

I must have one of the last Quasars made there......this is the one that I picked up from Captain Moody last December. It's (of course) the works-in-a-drawer. Stamp on the back says made in June 1975. There's also a sticker on the back that says Manufactured by Quasar with the same Franklin Park address.

It is model # WU 9182 LW-1

Works great, as Moody knows his stuff.

Would upload a photo of it, but I'm not good at shrinking it down to size to fit the requirements.

Those photos and descriptions were very interesting viewing, DRH.

Motorola Inc
 

While I was a senior in High School (1977), my electronics instructor arranged for two of us students to participate in a 2 day educators trade show in the Seattle area. I was one of two selected for the priviledge. We were only told that we would be paid for our services. The job turned out to be assembly of a Motorola educational kit color TV (works in a drawer) on the trade show floor, in full view of attendees. Apparently they saw the money that Heath, NRI, and others were making in the educational market and wanted to cash in.

We didn't get very far. The set was a combination of hand wired high voltage and power supply, with the "works" drawer being a seperate, mostly prewired, component. There were negative comments about our lack of progress when we got back to school. But we got paid, by being allowed to keep the tools that we used. I still have the tools.

Excellent story and pictures. Americana history, another piece fades away ....

Must not be much left of Motorola any more. We had a huge Fab plant just down the street from my work for many years. Got knocked down a couple of years ago and now a business park takes up the space where thousands used to work.

There doesn't seem to be much of any manufacturing left here anymore....!
That's what a global marketplace will get 'ya.

What vintage is that building? From the architecture it doesn't look real old, maybe early 1960s?

Was it used as Motorola corporate HQ? It seems hard to believe that the company that today makes fairly crummy cellphones in China and runs a Japanese-themed advertising campaign once built fairly substantial TV sets in America's heartland. I have had 3 Motorola cellphones since 2000, thinking that I would try to support a North American company with some history, but they have all been lousy (maybe all cellphones are, I dunno).

Wow. What a great blog. Too bad I missed it? Even Western Electric in Chicago has better documented history than the Motorola - Quasar - Panasonic phenomenon. In the 1960s CEO Mr. Galvin and Motorola were the subject of a court hearing that created the EEOC due to unfair hiring practices, etc. It made national news. Reads like a soap opera. In the 1970s Matsushita purchased the company from Motorola (then located at Franklin Park). Mass exodus of the middle management. Japan was not welcome in this country.. yet. My parents met at the Augusta Blvd location in the 1950s. They met in the company choir! Can you believe the company's HR department organized a huge employee choir? What company does that today? Dad became the Director of Engineering in the 1970s. He died at work in 1983 from a heart attack. Sorry to say the pictures remind me of his last moments. He gave his ALL to "work". (Damn work ethic) If only he could have lasted as long as those TV sets. I still have my TV set from 1983, it was my graduation present and it still works!!!

If the cost of cargo ship fuel keeps going up like it has lately, they may have to go back to making stuff in the USA. After kicking and screaming first...

Thanks for the pictures. The front view reminds me of the Polaroid building, another formerly great American company that has turned into something else. I wonder if any of the future inhabitants of those "lofts" will realize the history of that place.

Thanks for bringing this thread back. I didn't see it first time. Wonder how the lofts are going? How cool would it be to live there with gear that was made there?

That Motorola Quasar box is in incredible condition.
 

I saw a box like that on a scene in The Rockford Files that I think was filmed about '75. It was the same style box but with tape covering some of the words.

Dear Old TV Nut.. who are you? well, don't reveal your identity. Maybe a few clues? If you worked in the "plant" you had a hard work day. I heard a lot about the supervisors on the line. ...

I'd like to know why the building was vacant for so long! (at least 15 years).
Anyone?:scratch2::scratch2:

Great read, I too hail from Quincy IL. Born and raised and still drive by the old Motorola plant a few times a week. Loved the pics of the Chicago burb plant, that must be where my Motorola portable was built.
Dan

Great post! I have several Motorolas from that plant. Thanks for the history, too bad all things like this are disappearing, or moving to china.

Hmmmm, would be cool. BTW, maybe you'll see railroads to ship things come back as well, you can ship more on a gallon of diesel than you can by truck or worse, by air (although planes use jet fuel). Sorry for the OT statement, but I hear that airlines will be cutting 60 to 90 million seats between now and Christmas due to fuel. Even with the higher gas prices now, it is cheaper to drive than go by air.

Still, I wonder why no one else brought up USA manufacturing again but with the costs of fuel, it might happen. BTW, I think Hyundai opened up a plant in Alabama so even foreign companies are making factories here to be closer to the demand.

Another OT comment(based on above). If fuel prices remain as high as they are or go higher, I think a lot of airline traffic and almost all long haul trucking are doomed. The economics(vs trains) just makes no sense. Of course a decent passenger train system will need to be put in place(as it already is in a few parts of the US) to replace the airlines.

On topic-I have several Motorolas from the plant also. It is nice to know where they were made. I used to work for Motorola. and would have liked to have visited their museum in Chicago-but never got to. With all of their recent financial troubles, I am not sure if it is still open.

From reading this forum and from other sources, I get the impression that Chicago and the northeast US used be home to most US electronic manufacturing, but no more. What electronic manufacturing that is left (other than IBM in New York) is in the south and west. I say this as I work in the semiconductor industry and the remaining US fabs that I am aware of (other than IBM) are in Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon, and California. Of courrse, I am most familiar with semconductor manufacturing, others might have a different view.

Well, I might ask the same thing... as well as who was your dad?

No, I didn't work in the plant - I was in engineering and advanced development from 1966 (out of school) until I left and went to Zenith in 1975.

Hello
Doug and old-tv-nut... I am just someone who appreciates electronics (except I am struggling with the logistics of this blog as a newbie). Electronics is in my blood simply because I grew up with a dad who brought home 3-4 tv sets at one time and stacked them on top of each other for "field testing". :0) really! That's what he said.

I remember our "clicker" actually clicked! and it had two switches, one for changing the channel and one for on and off. Then there was the "works in a drawer" and the "instamatic" for dimming or brightening the picture screen on the tv. (a sensory spot on the front panel to match the level of light in the room).

Life in the plant was not good before the 1974 purchase, and the transition to a better work environment did not happen over night. But I do think the Japanese may have invented mass lay-offs. No offense but it was like a chopping block. Dad came home white as a ghost on those days. The company meant everything to him. Post WWll work ethic. How could he be responsible for giving someone the "ax". He swallowed all that stress.

He had to have worked there for 40 years. I think life got better eventually within the Quasar company. Headquarters moved to New Jersey, home of Panasonic and MECA (Matshusita Electronic Company of America). But remember, Motorola severed all ties to this company in 1974 and got out of the tv business all together. Motorola cellphones were a completely different product line unrelated to Matsushita employees, despite anyone working there with asian descent.

This year 2008, the name will be Panasonic (world wide) no more National, or Matsusita. Even though the old cronies who shepherded this company through many economic, cultural and technological trials are now long gone.

My dad's name was Merlyn Armstrong. He was director of engineering for several years. Died may 18, 1983. Age 56 at work. Could have used a defibrillator back then !! Just wasn't enough voltage for personal use at that Quasar Franklin Park location in '83 !!! JUST KIDDING,

Is digital really a lot better than analog? I'm holding on to our "photo slides" - digital reproduction is limited quality for printing, right?

Nice photos of the Quasar building. !!!! Doug. Hang on to them, please?

Hi Kathy - I remember your dad's name, although I can't recall interacting with him.

Are these photos still available for viewing?

I can’t view the attached photos

Looks like the photos are gone.

The buildings were demolished a while back and now it's the site of a server farm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIoxwVpWs5k

Thanks for the YouTube link. I particularly like the nostalgic last few minutes. It raised two questions about the 23GP22 CRT:

1. Was Motorola the company that designed and produced the first 23GP22s?
2. Why did the 23GP22 have such a short service life? Were the electron guns of inferior design/quality? Did the phosphors require so much drive that the electron guns just didn't last long?

I don't know exactly what the 23GP22 problems arose from. Not sure if it could be attributed to cathode problems or general quality.

Generally, CRT life depended on the cleanliness of the production and the thoroughness of evacuation and gettering, as well as the cathode characteristics. Motorola CRT production seems to have been mediocre, but not the worst, which "honor" would have to go to Admiral.

When I was maybe 12 years old, in Jr. High, I worked in the shop that sold and serviced newly-Quasar TVs in our little town. I was a Quasar fanatic, in the way that only teenage boys can be. One summer we were driving up to Michigan for family vacation and had to pass through Chicago on our way. Looking at the map I realized that Franklin Park was nearby, and begged, pleaded, annoyed, and harangued my father until he agreed to try to visit.

He pulled over at a pay phone and called up the factory, explaining who we were, who I was, and that I wouldn't give up until we got to visit. I was hoping to at least come into the lobby, collect a few brochures, and get a picture or two.

We pulled up to what I believe was the building in the photos in the OP an hour later and a guy in a suit met us at the door. He introduced himself to me but I don't remember his name, sadly. Later he took us onto the factory floor, showed me the wave-soldering line, and some other assembly. I was beside myself. After the factory tour, we went into a showroom of sorts and he showed me the upcoming models. This was a huge deal (to me) because it was the year they switched from the SuperModule to the DynaModule, and introduced DynaColor with VIR. We had heard about these sets but hadn't seen them yet. I had SOOOO many questions: what if the VIR signal transmitted bad instructions? Would DynaColor step in and fix it? Did they switch to the (smaller, denser) DynaModule to keep repair shops from repairing the modules instead of swapping them? Why did ASS sound so bad? I think I about wore him out.

Anyway he spent about an hour with us, answered all of my questions, and sent me home with an as-yet-unseen brochure for the upcoming sets. I am sure I was the happiest 12-year-old on the planet that day. I really wish I remembered his name, I'd like to thank him again.

The way I understand it the 23EGP22 was developed in 1965 by Motorola (and IIRC was a joint effort with national video or one motos CRT suppliers) to be the first American rectangular color since Westinghouse's failed recalled 1958 rectangular color CRT.

The EGP used a monochrome CRT envelope and was one of the only rectangular color CRTs with the HV button on the side. The EGP had a very orangey red phosphor which made achieving natural looking color difficult....add to that Motorola was using their single tube SODPIL color demodulator circuit which had weak green gain and required both hue and tint controls...this made natural color even more tricky to achieve.

Then on top of that the EGP had cathode emission life issues and an excessive number failed in warranty or shortly after.... I've read on VK that when the plant built to make them got dismantled to be used for something else that debris was found in a wash tank or similar and was probably contaminating the tubes and causing the early failure.

By the time these tubes were failing en masse other makers had developed 25" CRTs that had better reliability and most EGP sets were converted to those.

Doug/DRH4683 will tell you that the EGP is also dangerous to do a cataract removal on....I don't think he is the only member here that has had an EGP implode during a cat removal either.

What a great story! Thanks for sharing.
Exactly what year was that? (Trying to figure out if I was out of college and working there.)