John William Mackay was an uneducated Irish immigrant who gained controlling
interest in the Comstock Lode in the 1860's and became one of the countries
richest men when he struck the Big Bonanza shelf valued at over $100 million in
silver and gold. With this money he ventured into other businesses: establishing
the Bank of Nevada, part ownerships of Spreckels Sugar Company and the
Sprague
Elevator and Electrical Works, directorship of the Canadian Pacific and the
Southern Pacific railroads, ownership of additional mines in Colorado, Idaho,
and Alaska as well as timberlands and ranches in California. Along with James
Gordon Bennett, the publisher of the New York Herald, Mackay established the
Commercial Cable Company which laid a new cable across the Atlantic,
breaking the monopoly of the original cable owned by Western Union which was
controlled by Jay Gould. A pricing war followed which Mackay won, but in the
course of it Gould denied Mackay the use of Western Union telegraph lines in the
continental United States. Mackay bought up small telegraph companies,
consolidating them under a single nationwide umbrella called the Postal
Telegraph Company. Later he formed the Commercial Pacific Cable Company
intending to lay cable across the Pacific. John Mackay died in 1902, leaving his
son Clarence $500 million. Clarence finished the Pacific cable in 1904.
In 1927, Clarence Mackay acquired the transmitting stations of the Federal
Radio and Telegraph Company. This new company was called Mackay Radio and
Telegraph. Federal still retained their manufacturing facilities and
produced the equipment for Mackay Radio under a 20 year contract. Since
Mackay didn't produce their own equipment until 1948, the equipment known as
Mackay Radios were actually manufactured by Federal Radio.
Then in 1928, Mackay merged all it's companies under International
Telephone & Telegraph Company (IT&T) which "combined an extensive
network of submarine cables, telegraph land lines and the rapidly developing
field of radio."
1930 Mackay Radiogram
However, the economy, the stock market crash with the resulting depression
and the vagrancies of business conspired against Mackay and, in spite of product
enhancements and market growth, IT&T found itself financially bereft by
1932 when it's stock value dropped from its 1929 high of $149/share to
$2.63/share . Clarence Mackey lost most of his wealth and in 1935 his
company filed for bankruptcy. Clarence Mackay died of cancer in 1938. The
reorganization under the bankruptcy provisions helped restore its solvency
but at the eventual expense of Postal Telegraph merging with Western
Union and with Mackay Radio and Telegraph and Commercial Cable
going to American Cable & Radio Corporation (AC&R).
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