A Long-Gone Company name on an old piece of service equipment in the basement of a building built in the early 1900’s had a manufacturers tag: Arrow-Hart & Hegeman.
A name I didn’t recognize and wondered if it still existed. It turns out that Charles G. Perkins founded the Arrow Electric Manufacturing Co. in 1905 in Hartford CT. After his death in 1927 the company merged with Hart & Hegeman another electrical company in which Mr. Perkins was the major shareholder. The new company Arrow-Hart & Hegeman fell afoul of the FTC during the 1925 merger due to the wrong share type being issued to the shareholders which delayed the finalization of the merger until 1935 when they were exonerated by the FTC.
The new Arrow-Hart & Hegeman company was the principal supplier to DeWalt products for many years of contactors, switches, starters and other electrical components and devices.
Arrow-Hart & Hegeman was then acquired by Cooper Industries, another electrical device and wire manufacturer who still uses the Arrow-Hart name on products for residential and industrial products.
In a 1922 advertisement Arrow Electric Manufacturing Co is noted as manufacturing radium luminous flush switches and pull-chain pendants for lighting at their factory locations in Hartford Ct.
Radium was one of the first radioactive elements ever discovered in 1898: not ideal to have in your home!
The original six story factory building burnt down in 2022 and due to radium contamination, is at the time of the blog a city owned parking lot. In 2012 Eaton Corporation, a Cleveland headquartered company bought Cooper and now owns the Arrow-Hart brand.
