By: Mary E. Mortimer
In 1902, brothers Harrison Jules Louis Frank and Leon Harrison Frank, who were electrical machinery designers, founded the Mutual Electric and Machine Co. in Wheeling, West Virginia. The brothers conceived a new method of positive contact for knife-type electrical switches and named their products BullDog.
By 1915, the Frank brothers recognized most of their orders were coming from Detroit, Michigan. They then moved their company to a small building on Fort St. in Detroit. BullDog switches became so popular that the Mutual Electric and Machine Co. began receiving mail addressed to the “BullDog Electric Company” or “BullDog Switches, Detroit.” As a result, they changed their name to BullDog Electric Products Co.
BullDog Electric announced in August 1950, that they were opening a new Ohio subsidiary in Bellefontaine. The new company was to be named Bellefontaine Electric Products and would manufacture “certain electrical devices and components such as “Pushmatics” circuit breakers and employ approximately 100 women.” The company leased the Knowlton Construction Company’s 26,000-square-foot building at 811 N. Main St. in Bellefontaine. In May of 1951, the name was officially changed to BullDog Electric Products Co. of Ohio, Bellefontaine Division. That same year BullDog Electric opened a plant in Urbana.
BullDog Electric announced in August 1952 that they would sponsor an annual $500 scholarship at Bellefontaine High School. Don Lee was the first recipient of the scholarship followed by Shirley Kemper in 1953, Ronald Hadley in 1954, and Ann Patrick in 1955. The scholarships continued for several years.
BullDog Electric became a division of the I.T.E. Circuit Breaker Co. of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1954. That same year, the Bellefontaine plant added a second 100,000-gallon water tower for fire prevention purposes. It was erected by the Chicago Iron & Bridge Company who also erected a water tower at the nearby Rockwell plant.
BullDog Electric enjoyed great success in Bellefontaine. Within just three years, BullDog and its parent company I.T.E. expanded the local factory to 48,000 square feet of floor space and added about 40 new employees. Bulldog Electric built a new 40,000 square foot plant in Marysville in 1958.
By 1960, I.T.E. operated units in Philadelphia, Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Marysville, Urbana and Bellefontaine. They also had a division in Toronto, Canada. I.T.E merged with Imperial Eastmans in February 1968 and the name was changed to I.T.E. Imperial Corp.
I.T.E. announced its fourth major expansion in January 1969, increasing the factory from 105,000 square feet to 200,000 square feet. In June of that year, they moved all their electrical engineering and business functions from Detroit to Bellefontaine. They also moved warehouse operations from Toledo and the industrial control functions of I.T.E. in Fremont to Bellefontaine. The Detroit, Toledo, and Fremont operations were phased into the Bellefontaine plant, adding more than 150 employees, with the majority being engineers and accounting personnel. The three Ohio plants each employed around 400 people.
In 1976, Gould, a manufacturer of automotive parts and automotive and industrial batteries, took control of ITE Imperial Corp. when they bought 2.5 million shares of I.T.E. common stock at $20 a share, giving them 51 percent of I.T.E. The company was then renamed Gould- I.T.E. Imperial Corp. By January 1977, the merger was complete, and they began operating under the Gould name.
Siemens Energy & Automation Inc. bought Gould in February 1983. They added 100 new jobs in October 2002 when they transferred work from the Osceola, Iowa plant to Bellefontaine.
In February 2007, Siemens Energy & Automation announced they would be closing the Bellefontaine plant in 2008 and the Urbana plant in 2010. Government, civic, and union leaders in Logan and Champaign Counties met with Siemens to try to keep the facilities operational but were unsuccessful.
The plants which manufactured circuit breakers, were no longer competitive in their markets. Siemens planned to begin moving their products to Mexico and other third-party suppliers by fall. The Bellefontaine plant employed about 500 workers and the Urbana plant about 225.
Layoffs began in January 2009 and later in the year the Bellefontaine and Urbana plants were closed. The BullDog, Gould, I.T.E., and Siemens plants were a major employer in Logan County for almost 60 years.
Visit the Logan County History Center at 521 E. Columbus Ave., Bellefontaine, Ohio 43311, to learn more interesting aspects of Logan County History. The History Center is open for tours Wednesday – Sunday from 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm.
