Pass & Seymour factory, Solvay c. 1901. Onondaga Historical Association

In July of 1890, electricity was still a young, disruptive, technology.

Thomas Edison’s Pearl Street Power Plant, in New York City, had only been operational for a mere eight years. His main rival, George Westinghouse, formed Westinghouse Electric Company in 1886.

Public concern about the safety of this revolutionary, almost magical, innovation was widespread. Much of this anxiety was the result of a campaign waged by Edison, the father of direct current (DC) against his former employee, Nikola Tesla, and the alternating current (AC) technology he patented in 1888, before Tesla was hired by Westinghouse, during the so-called “War of the Currents.”

These understandable public anxieties were exacerbated by the very real issue of electrical fires that plagued the burgeoning industry. Much of this danger was due to the fact that the earliest insulators were made of wood.

Here in Central New York, Albert Seymour, the superintendent of Syracuse Light and Power Company, had grown increasingly frustrated by the regularity of electrical shocks and fires terrorizing his customers.

In search of a remedy, he approached James Pass, the superintendent of the Onondaga Pottery Company (OPC), in 1889 to manufacture porcelain insulators. Seymour could not have asked for a more capable or visionary partner.

- James Pass (1856- 1913). Pass died at only 56 from pneumonia complicated by silicosis, commonly known as “Potter’s Lung.” He is buried in Myrtle Hill Cemetery in Westvale. In 1925, his wife, Adelaide, donated a 13.8-acre plot to the city of Syracuse in his memory. The James Pass Arboretum remains open to the public today.   Onondaga Historical Association Onondaga Historical AssociationOnondaga Historical Association

By 1889, James Pass was arguably the most skilled and accomplished ceramicist in the United States.

Pass had grown up in and around the business. He was dedicated to a fastidious regiment of testing and tinkering to get the absolute best product he could. His dedication to his craft proved exceedingly fruitful, and, ultimately, fateful.

In 1884, Pass succeeded his father, Richard, an English immigrant and potter, as superintendent of OPC.

Around 1888, Pass developed the a vitreous, translucent, and non-absorbent clay body, which he named “Syracuse China.” The product, later released to the public as Imperial Geddo, would make Onondaga Pottery Company the industry leader.

According to a letter written by his son, Richard, James Pass was approached by Seymour to use his newly developed product to revolutionize the electrical industry in the same way it did the china industry. Intrigued by the possibilities, Pass and Seymour, formed a partnership in July of 1890, to produce “Syracuse China” for electrical applications. In 1891, Pass brought Bert E. Salisbury, his colleague at OPC, in as a partner in the new venture.

In the early years, this new, separate company, Pass & Seymour, operated in a small former horseshoe factory just a short distance from the OPC plant on the Erie Canal.

The demand for the company’s electrical porcelain circuit breakers and insulators was massive. It is no exaggeration to say that the products developed and manufactured here in Syracuse contributed in an unparalleled way to the exponential growth in electricity’s mass adoption and rise of America’s industrial might.

Ceramic fixtures being dried and inspected by Thomas Cerio and Tony Virgilio in the Solvay factory in 1955.   Onondaga Historical Association Onondaga Historical AssociationOnondaga Historical Association

In 1898, the company continued its visionary ways and began the production of spark plugs for use in the newest mechanical wonder, the automobile.

That same year, Bert Salisbury joined the partnership. The near insatiable demand for their excellent products, which included switches, tubes, knobs, light and electrical sockets, cleats and a host of other necessary electrical products soared and the firm became known and trusted throughout the world.

By 1900, the firm had outgrown the old horseshoe factory and the company built a massive new plant in Solvay. The next year, Pass, Seymour, and Salisbury formed Pass & Seymour Inc., capitalized at $100,000 ($3 million in 2022).

By 1925, Pass & Seymour was recognized as one of the major manufacturers in Onondaga County, employing nearly 500 people.

Proponents of what they termed “Industrial Management,” P & S provided their employees with excellent pay and a variety of benefits. For decades, the company frequently offered a variety of events, dinners and outings to employees to enhance the workplace experience.

In 1929, Richard Pass, was elected president of the company his father had founded. He continued in that role until 1955.

World War II brought an increased demand for the products manufactured by Pass & Seymour as it continued to work closely with OPC to develop land mines for the Army.

Syracuse China had produced a ceramic land mine and requested that Pass & Seymour manufacture a fuse for the device. American forces were then provided with these non-metallic fuses encased in the mine that could not be identified by metal detectors used for this purpose.

However, before it was deemed safe enough to release to the Army, the fuse, was tested over 400 times on the company’s remote proving ground located in nearby Highland Forest. The collaboration made Syracuse one of the nation’s centers of mine technology research.

Today, the Onondaga Historical Association has one of these mines on display in our downtown museum. P & S’s work for the U.S. government increased after the war years and the Defense Department became one of the company’s biggest customers.

Over the ensuing decades, Pass & Seymour continued to be an industry leader.

Its products illuminated everything from the original Times Square sign and the Brooklyn Bridge, to the enormous Ford sign at the company’s Rouge Plant in Dearborn, Michigan, the largest integrated factory in the world at the time.

Beyond these monumental applications, Pass & Seymour has dominated the electrical outlet and switch market it revolutionized in the 1890s. At its peak, the company employed almost 1,000 people at the sprawling Milton Avenue facility.

In 1984, a French company, Legrand US purchased Pass & Seymour.

Citing the aging facilities and other economic factors, Legrand decided to close the factory in 1994, which at that point employed only 265 workers, marking the end of a rich manufacturing history stretching back over a century.

Legrand/Pass & Seymour still maintains a company headquarters on Boyd Avenue in Solvay, nearly all that remains of the 22-building factory complex.

Though the host of products still being sold all over the world bearing the name Pass & Seymour are no longer made here in Central New York, the brand’s reputation and longevity is a testament to the legacy of innovation, cooperation, and dedication of the company’s founders and workers.

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