Good EA Laboratories Article

[Andrew Gorman]

Here is an interesting article on the history of EA Laboratories in three parts:
https://www.brownstoner.com/history/walkabout-a-honking-good-idea-e-a-laboratories/

 

[catfish]

Great story

 

[bike]

If you’ve ever been walking down the street and a car passes you blasting the horn with the strains of “La Cucaracha,” “The Godfather Theme,” “Here Comes the Bride,” or some other popular eight bars of music making it past your earbuds, then you owe a thought, or a good curse, to Emanuel Aufiero.

In 1908, he invented the first electronically operated motor horn. That one merely honked. His company, E.A. Laboratories, located right here in northern Bedford Stuyvesant, was where the first theme-song car horn was born. That didn’t happen in the 1960s or ‘70s either. It was back in 1941, during World War II.

Emanuel Aufiero was born in Italy in 1882. He and his brother Michael came to America in 1900 to seek their fortunes. Both brothers were mechanically inclined, but Emanuel was an inventive mechanical genius.

He was one of those people who could look at a piece of machinery and understand it, put it to good use, and fix it if it were broken. More importantly, he could see where that object, or tool or process could be improved. He was one of those idea men who could take something that already worked and evolve that object, taking it to the next step in its evolution.

At the dawn of the 20th century, there was nothing so intriguing and exciting as the ever-changing world of the automobile. It captured the 20th century imagination, and inventors and innovators were constantly evolving the motor car into something more efficient and better each year. The Aufieros got into the car accessory business.

Starting in a small workroom in Manhattan, Emanuel invented the first motor driven automobile horn. It was a variation on the classic “ahooga” horn that you’ve probably seen in old movies or at vintage auto shows. It was an instant success, and helped promote Mr. Aufiero into auto history, and soon, into his first law suit.

In 1910, Aufiero had ideas for car horns, windshield wipers, mirrors, signaling lights and many other small components that had big impacts on driving safety and automobile design. But he didn’t have the money to translate these ideas into reality.

That year, he went into contract with the Automobile Supply Company of Brooklyn, the largest producer of automobile accessories. Mr. Louis Rubes was president of the company. He eagerly took everything Aufiero came up with and went into production.

Aufiero was offered contracts that paid him a nice sum, but also prohibited him from selling any of his inventions anywhere else, or from producing them himself. Rubes also had the patent rights to the inventions and the rights to any future inventions, improvements or innovations to those products in perpetuity. Methinks Emanuel Aufiero either had a really bad lawyer, or no lawyer advising him when he signed over his rights.

During the years between 1910 and 1914, Aufiero continued to come up with new ideas for horns, especially, as well as other devices. He applied for dozens of patents, all of which he had to turn over to Automobile Supply. He began to chafe under the yoke of his contract. Other manufacturers had come to him asking him to design for them, but he had to turn them down.

Finally, in 1914, he and his brother Michael founded the E. A. Laboratories. His brother was president, and his sister-in-law, Michael’s wife, was also a named partner. The new company began production of a new horn, one that he had never shown to Rubes. A new patent was applied for, and this one had Michael’s name on it, not Emanuel’s.

When Rubes found out about it, he sued. He claimed that the horn was Emanuel’s work, not Michael’s, and therefore the property of Automobile Supply. He also claimed that he had put out hundreds of thousands of dollars producing Aufiero’s designs, and needed those designs to continue, or he would be out of business. The law suit covered 22 different patents, and had generated a 455 page complaint, the largest number of pages in New York State Supreme Court to that date. The case dragged on through 1916.

In 1915, Rubes probably poisoned the jury pool when he announced that because of the ongoing litigation, he was moving out of Brooklyn, and taking his plant to New Jersey. The company was pretty big, filling two large factory buildings on Taaffe Place in Wallabout. They made 85% of the bulb horns used on motor vehicles in the United States, and employed over 500 people, mostly men. Rubes had just found out he had lost a similar suit, this one filed by a company in Newark, and had to stop manufacturing one of his most popular horns. He really needed to win this one.

When the trial was finally ready to proceed in late October of 1916, Louis Rubes got sick, so sick he couldn’t testify in court. The judge, James C. Cropsey, was tired by this point, and decided to take the trial to Rubes. He had court convene at Rubes bedside at his home at 335 Jefferson Avenue. (Only a few doors down from my old Bed Stuy home, coincidentally). Judge Cropsey sat at the foot of Rubes’ bed, with the lawyers for both sides in attendance and the court reporter. Louis Rubes testified from there.

I tried to find a story on the result, but couldn’t. A decision may not have been made. Louis Rubes filed for bankruptcy in 1917. The legal costs and the injunctions against manufacturing the items he lost in the other case, and the possibility of losing the Aufiero patents was too much for his health and finances. He had to liquidate everything. He moved out of his house, to a house on Revere Place in Crown Heights North, and “retired.” He died nine years later of pneumonia, in 1926. He was only 57.

With many of his patents once again in his control, Emanuel Aufiero and his brother continued to grow their new business. Hopefully E. A. Laboratories hired some of Automobile Supply’s old workers. The company now had fifty workers, and needed more room.

They moved to a larger location at 50 Broadway, in the Gretsch Building. Soon that space was too small. In 1919 the Laboratories moved to a new building built near the corner of Spencer Street and Myrtle Avenue. That building had three stories.

Two more were added in 1925, and two years after that, another six story factory building was built next door. The Aufiero family and their car horn company were doing quite well. They were making windshield wipers and signal devices for automobiles, and horns for autos, motorcycles and bicycles.

But while the company continued to grow, genius inventor Emanuel Aufiero was going through a personal hell. The electric automobile horn, that simple idea that had launched his career and made him well-off, had turned out to be the sound that would drive him mad.

The Automobile Supply Company had gone under, in part because of his lawsuit. 500 men lost their livelihoods and Louis Rubes had gone bankrupt and was a sick and broken man. Emanuel Aufiero couldn’t take the guilt or the pressure. He had a breakdown and ended up in a sanitarium.

UPDATE: The grandnephew of Louis Rubes contacted Brownstoner with a letter regarding some of the late automobile company president’s personal history and family fortunes.
Dear Sir/Madam,

I am the grandnephew of Louis Rubes and was born years after his death, but my father, Harry Rubes, was very close to him. There was another horn manufacturer in the 1910s who had an earlier patent. This manufacturer claimed that his patent would apply to the sound made any car horn. He sued Louis and won, but Louis appealed and won the appeal. During World War I, Louis did manufacture munitions for the British army, but this was a financial disaster, and he was forced to sell off his summer estate in New Jersey. My father lived with him in the early 1920s while attending Brooklyn Prep High School. Louis had a chauffeur named Gus who taught my father to drive. After World War I, Louis opened one of the first investment advisory firms on Wall Street. This was very successful, and at his death in 1926, his net worth would have been in the millions in today’s dollars. As a child, I remember visiting his grave in St. John’s Cemetery in Brooklyn and thinking that this was the largest headstone I had ever seen. After the depression hit three years later, the value of the firm plummeted.
Louis went outside the Italian subculture to marry Hilda. After his death, she did become estranged from the Rubes family, possibly because of her objection to the patriarchal family structure. My father continued to run the firm until the start of World War II.
Sincerely,

Richard Rubes​

But our story is not over. Emanuel left the sanitarium a cured man, only to find out that his wife had signed away all of his stock in his company. Thanks a lot. Everyone wanted a piece of this poor man. The conclusion of this honking Brooklyn story, next time.

 

[bike]

In 1929, Emanuel Aufiero, the president of E. A. Laboratories, the makers of the best car, motorcycle and bike horns around, had a nervous breakdown. His life had been an immigrant success story – a young man comes to America from Italy in the new century, and becomes a success in the field of automotive accessories.

His designs and innovations are snapped up by the largest manufacturer of such items in the country, and he is paid more money than he’s ever imagined in his life. He marries, has children, and is living in Brooklyn, where he is respected and admired. What more could anyone want? Part One of our story introduces our characters and their products.

Success was not entirely all it was imagined to be. Aufiero was indeed a genius in his field, and he had produced dozens of designs for his employer, the Automobile Supply Company of Brooklyn. But he was ill-advised, or just hoodwinked on the terms of his contract. Early on, he had signed a very restrictive and exclusive contract with Louis Rubes, the president of ASC.

That contract gave his employer the lifetime rights to all designs produced for manufacture by ASC, and also the rights to anything Aufiero ever came up with in the future, even if he was no longer working for ASC. That, of course, guaranteed that Aufiero would never leave ASC’s employ, because what was the point of another company hiring him to design goods, when that company could not produce them without paying Rubes a cut of the profits?

As can be expected, Aufiero wanted out from his contract. He and his brother decided to form their own company and manufacture automotive accessories that he had never shown to Rubes. They rather rashly named their company E. A. Laboratories, and began work in a small workshop in Manhattan. When Rubes found out, he sued.

In deposition and trial, he said that ASC had paid Aufiero handsomely for his designs, and was being repaid by treachery. Aufiero was in breach of contract, he asserted, and had to close his factory, and in addition, give the new designs and proceeds thereof, to Rubes, as technically, they belonged to him.

UPDATE: The grandnephew of Louis Rubes contacted Brownstoner with a letter regarding some of the late automobile company president’s personal history and family fortunes. You can read it at the end of Part 1.​

Long story short, karma can be an angry female dog. Because of this lawsuit, as well as another similar suit Rubes had going on at the same time, his company went bankrupt, and he was a sick and broken man. His 500 employees were out of work, and the marshals were having an auction and sale of his factory and contents. Aufiero had won by default.

Emanuel was certainly happy about that, but the guilt made him sick. Several years later, the company had grown tremendously, taking over the marketplace that ASC had once commanded. They had built a new factory on the corner of Myrtle Avenue and Spencer Street, in a building named after him. Still, it was all too much; Aufiero had a nervous breakdown.

While Emanuel was recovering in a sanitarium, his wife Adele had the courts declare him incompetent, and all of his assets, including company stock, were turned over to her. He was in the sanitarium for less than a month. When he got out, and came home to resume his life, Emanuel found out that Adele had sold all of the stock to Emanuel’s youngest brother, John – almost $155,000 worth.

In order to get his possessions back, Adele wanted him to sign an agreement that stated that he would receive two-thirds of his estate back, but the remaining third would be in his wife’s name. She would also get $41,000 in cash, up front. Upon the event of his death, his portion of the estate would be divided between their children and her relatives. His relatives were out.

They told him that if he didn’t sign the agreement, then they were going to have him recommitted to the sanitarium, and he wouldn’t be getting out soon. He signed this second bad contract. This time, however, Emanuel Aufiero wasted no time in getting a lawyer and taking the case to the courts. He sued his wife, her brother, Marcello Bucci, the Bucci family, and for good measure, his son, Emanuel, Jr.

Adele’s lawyer, Armand C. Lopez, was seen as the mastermind of this agreement. Aufiero’s lawyer was former judge Charles C. F. Wahle. Mrs. Aufiero also was suing for separation, claiming that Aufiero was a cruel and demanding husband, and had been so since they got married in 1917.

She cited several instances where he had allegedly treated her cruelly. Mr. Wahle pointed out at trial that one of those instances had taken place when his client was in the sanitarium. Oops. Mrs. Aufiero’s lawyers asked for a continuance.

I couldn’t find out what happened next, but they may have settled. The case is not mentioned in the papers again. If the couple separated, which seems likely, they never divorced, but being Old World Italian Catholics, they probably wouldn’t, anyway. Younger brother John soon took over the presidency of the company. He was very good at it, and under his tenure, E. A. Laboratories continued to grow and add to its profitable line of accessories.

Emanuel continued to tinker in his lab, and by the beginning of the 1940s, they were supplying most of the domestic and international car manufacturers with product of some kind. The Laboratory had filled up their first five story factory building, and was now a new six story building next door, as well.

The company always had want-ads in the papers, was a union shop, and at times, could have even been a fun place to work, if the stories printed in the paper were true. After all, a car horn could be a funny thing.

In 1941, as America was teetering on the brink of entering World War II, some levity was offered in a Brooklyn Eagle article. It spoke of the jolt one could get by walking past the E. A. Laboratories, where the air was full of the sound of electronic car horns that could play any tune.

An early example of programming, the horns had disks inside that were imprinted with the short tune. You could get boogie-woogie tunes, military service themes, or “The Campbell’s are Coming.” They were even working on the opening strains of “the Ride of the Valkyries.” (I want that one!)

John Aufiero was interviewed, and the article spoke of the company’s commitment to the community, local charities for all faiths and causes, and John’s establishment of a trade school like his alma mater, Pratt Institute, in his native Italy.

The school was started in 1932, and was running in 1937. The article also mentioned that the company had been having some union and labor problems, but all was resolved. The labor issues would haunt the company, even as America got ready to enter World War II.

When the war started, E. A. Laboratories was called upon to stop production of auto horns, heaters and windshield wipers and move into wartime production. They now were churning out gun sights, ship landing lights and lights and other equipment for military aircraft. Production was upped by 300%, with the tool and die works running day and night. More people were hired, including women, who for the first time took over some of the factory work.

John Aufiero had been a veteran in World War I, and soon became very involved in his company’s war efforts. The plant was turned over to military production in record time. When scrap iron drives were held, E. A. Laboratories donated 150,000 pounds of manufactured tools and dies as well as other metal scrap.

The tools and dies, crafted specifically for their domestic production, represented two million man hours of work. The money from the sale of the scrap was further donated to the Red Cross and the USO. In 1942, the company took out a full page ad in the Eagle, celebrating America and touting their own patriotism.

EAL wanted those lucrative government contracts, but John Aufiero also had some skeletons in his closet that he was desperately trying to keep buried. His labor relations were not good. There had been several strikes against the company in recent years, and when the war broke out, he had just negotiated a tentative peace with the unions.

In 1944, the company was charged with not paying overtime, not keeping adequate records, and shipping interstate, violating the wage-hour law. They promised to pay all overtime owed, and clean up their record keeping and other offenses.

Then in 1945, at the height of the war, the closet burst open, and the skeletons began goose-stepping out. It turned out that John Aufiero had some strong fascist leanings. He had been a vocal admirer of Mussolini, and in his trips to Italy to visit his mother and relatives and set up his trade school, he may have even met Il Duce. He was also admirer of several other prominent Italian fascists, including the anti-Semitic fascist newspaper editor Domenico Trombetta.

In 1938, he had thrown a fundraising dance for a Fascist home for Italians abroad, located in Rome. He printed a souvenir book for the occasion which was full of praises for Benito Mussolini, his government, Trombetta and others. The statements in the journal had even been signed by Aufiero. At any other time, no one would have made much of it, or even noticed. But the United States was at war with Italy and its fascist government. Aufiero had government contracts for items that went into military airplanes. Can we say “Big Problem?”

 

[bike]

In the fall of 1942, the Bedford Stuyvesant-based automobile horn and headlight company, E. A. Laboratories, entered World War II. As one of America’s largest automobile accessories companies, EAL was poised to serve the country by converting its factory into a war materials manufacturing plant.

Their distinctive song-tune electric horns, their car heaters and windshield wipers were going to be replaced by gun sights for airplanes, landing lights, and horns for ships, Jeeps and other military vehicles.

The company was very patriotic in their embrace of the war effort. John Aufiero, EAL’s president, was the younger brother of the founder of the company, inventor Emanuel Aufiero. He published full page patriotic ads in the local papers, contributed tons of scrap metal to the war effort, and hired more workers to enable the plant to work non-stop at a 300% rise in production.

The American flag flew highest over the corner of Spencer Place and Myrtle Avenue in the two adjoining buildings that made up the E. A. Laboratories. Please see Parts One and Two, which give lots of background.

All of that flag waving may have been a necessary distraction to point attention away from John Aufiero’s personal skeletons. As I mentioned in the last chapter of this story, those skeletons were about to goose-step out of his closet, and make a mess of his well-ordered public persona. Aufiero, it appears, had a great admiration for Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy, and the enemy of the United States and Allied forces.

Mr. Aufiero had been to Italy, his birthplace, several times after the Fascists took over, and had hobnobbed with the new leadership. He had voiced great support for the brutal Italian takeover of Ethiopia.

Here in the US, he had sponsored a dinner celebrating the career of Fascist and anti-Semitic newspaper editor Domenico Trombetta, and had written effusively about the successful government policies of Il Duce. In return, they awarded him with the honorary title of “Commendatore.”

None of that was illegal, or even very controversial before the start of the war. But after Pearl Harbor, it was poison. It was also a weapon in the hands of Aufiero’s enemies; the auto-worker’s union that represented a large percentage of EAL’s work force.

The Laboratories had a lot of labor issues under John Aufiero, and strikes and work slowdowns were not uncommon. He had been successfully taken to court and made to pay back thousands of dollars in withheld overtime. Alfiero recanted his admiration for the Fascists, and called Mussolini a “rat,” but it was too late. The damaging information was out there.

Because Aufiero had been so gung-ho about preparing for war, and shutting down his domestic production, he was awarded hefty government contracts from the military. During the years between 1943 through 1945, his company worked exclusively for the government.

By 1944, they had a $7 million contract for manufacturing gun sights for bombers and detachable landing lights for all kinds of airplanes. Some enterprising officials of Local 844 of the United Auto Workers union wanted some contracts of their own.

Three of them came to Aufiero and told him that if he didn’t pay them shakedown money, the union was going to call slowdowns and if that didn’t work, a general strike. He gave them all $200 each. A short time later, they came back with the same demands.

This time they wanted real money, not the “chicken-feed” they had been receiving. Other union officials in other factories were getting rich, they said. Where was theirs? The following week, production slowed down by 75%. A strike was called for the next week, and Aufiero promised to pay up. Unbeknownst to them, he also went to the police.

They told him to make the payoffs, which amounted to three payments to the three officials of $600 each. Aufiero met them in a restaurant on Grand Street, in Manhattan. As soon as the enveloped passed hands, the police swept in. The three were arrested, went to trial, and were sentenced to a year in prison, each. They immediately appealed.

Because of the arrest, a strike was called by the local. Aufiero fired all of the strikers, offering to rehire anyone who denounced the union. That was illegal and the courts forced him to rehire the workers. But the animosity and mistrust grew.

When the union leadership found out about Aufiero’s relationship with the Fascists in Italy, They knew they had their revenge. They immediately made the relationship public, and tied Aufiero’s Fascist connections to his labor problems. The stink that rose from that combination was almost more than the company could handle.

There were three parties in this story, John Aufiero and EAL, the union and the government. After the union leaked Aufiero’s link to the Italian Fascists, the government could not afford to be in business with a company that was friendly with the enemy.

They didn’t come out and phrase it that way, because that would be admitting that they hadn’t vetted EAL at all, and had been fine with a business relationship with someone who could have possibly been able to sabotage, or compromise the war effort. So they used the union.

Fred M. Vinson, the Director of the Office of Economic Stabilization, a wartime government agency charged with regulating inflation through price, wage and salary increases, imposed sanctions on E.A. Laboratories. He cancelled their government contracts, charging that Aufiero’s refusal to recognize the local chapter of the U.A.W. had caused a violation of the War Labor Board’s authority.

Because the union had walked out on a strike, Aufiero claimed that they had violated their agreement and voided their contract with the company, thereby losing their union rep’s standing as a representative of anything.

The union fought back, charging that EAL was still manufacturing “unnecessary” domestic production. They were still making the musical car horns that had been their bread and butter, and were the signature product of the company.

One hundred workers walked out of the plant, charging that EAL had taken steel that was necessary for the war effort, and was producing car horns. That was a very serious charge at a time when municipalities were melting down their statues and bells for the war effort.

Picketers surrounded the War Labor Board’s offices in the Empire State Building, chanting that their husbands and sons could not shoot the Japanese, or win on the Western Front with musical horns. The WLB sent some of their top people over to EAL to demand an explanation.

Aufiero replied that they were doing nothing illegal. He said that he had government permission to produce the horns, and pulled out an exemption that allowed him to continue to use part of his plant, and his steel, to manufacture all manner of electric horns, not just the musical ones. The horns were being used by the Army, Coast Guard and Navy for signaling and other military uses.

The WLB was embarrassed, as Aufiero had all of his paperwork in order, including purchase orders. The union had not known the end use of the horns, and neither had the picketers. The union’s attempt to drive Aufiero out of business during peak wartime production seems highly self-destructive, as their own membership would be out of work if the plant had to shut down. The hatred of Aufiero was so strong; they couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

In April of 1945, the U.A.W. and E.A. Laboratories struck a deal, and made peace. The government agencies backed down, charges were dropped, and all of the company’s government contracts were restored. Production could proceed again, in full. But there was a price.

Only two months before the agreements were signed, the founder of the company, Emanuel Aufiero, died at the age of 63. This gentle man had only wanted to be able to create his marvelous automobile accessories, not be embroiled in wartime and union entanglements.

It is not known how much day to day involvement Emanuel had in the company at that point, as John Aufiero, his younger brother, was the face and authority of the company. Emanuel’s wife, Adele, who had taken control of all of his money when he was institutionalized, was still married to him at his death.

Their son Emanuel Jr. was a prominent doctor in Queens. Emanuel Aufiero’s funeral mass was near his home in Forest Hills, and he is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Brooklyn.

When the war ended, the plant laid off all of the extra workers, and went back to producing its domestic product. Emanuel and John Aufiero separately, have dozens of patents in their names for various automobile accessories, including horns, heaters, and from the war years, signaling devices and other military patents.

E. A. Laboratories was one of the best at what they produced. Their products were used by all of the American car manufacturers, as well as by many foreign manufacturers.

I found help wanted ads for the Laboratories up until 1954. I could find no obituary for John Aufiero, and no record of what happened to the plant. I don’t know if they moved, were bought out, or just closed. I did find that the patents filed by Emanuel Aufiero for his musical car horns are still being referenced in more modern patents today.

The EAL buildings at 692 Myrtle Avenue are now apartments and offices. The Emanuel Aufiero Building still has his name on it, a mystery to people who wonder as they walk in. “Who was that,” you may well ask. He was the man who invented the musical car horn, and this was home to one of Brooklyn’s most successful businesses, born out of the inventive mind of someone who never ran out of ideas. Cue the “Ride of the Valkyries.”