John Wolz

Edith Cameron, who worked in the fastener industry for 56 years, marked her 90th birthday October 12, 2008.

In 1937 Cameron began a summer job with Anti-Corrosive Metal Products Co. in Castleton, NY, for $12 per 5 1/2-day week.

In those days there were no distributors and no outside salesmen or reps. All sales were to the end user and conducted by mail.

In 1939 Cameron became executive secretary to Anti-Corrosive president Edmund Bainbridge.
Bainbridge, a metallurgist, was a pioneer in the development of stainless wire and rod. “Along with the Duriron Co. of Dayton, Ohio, he came up with the correct melt for making Durimet T and Durimet L (later known as Carpenter 20SCB),” Cameron recalled in her 1993 NIFS Hall of Fame induction speech. Bainbridge developed Type 321 Stainless for the Manhattan Project.

With the approaching World War II, Cameron needed to learn government specifications for raw material and finished goods and worked with government inspectors “who frequented our plant.”

During World War II Anti-Corrosive operated seven days a week and the office staff assisted the shipping department.

Cameron recalled that in those days there was no record of what was in stock or where in the warehouse it was located. “You merely picked up the customer’s order and went searching. It was an excellent way to learn what the product looked like.”

During the war, Cameron set up a purchasing department with a 3×5 card system.

In 1943 Cameron worked briefly for the War Production Board and Controlled Materials Plan. CMP became known as “Confused Made Perfect” and Cameron noted in 1993 “you see nothing has changed in DC.”

After WWII, Cameron said she spent many evenings at Anti-Corrosive calculating order cancellation charges as government and subcontractor charges “poured in to us, all thru Western Union, and were delivered to us in cartons.”

In 1956 Cameron left Anti-Corrosive with president Jerry Kapner to start Albany Products in Norwalk, CT. She was involved in purchasing and sales, secretarial duties and training those who later rose in the industry.

Mill supply houses, hardware stores and steel centers replaced the war customers. Albany started an outside sales force and hired its first outside sales woman, Laura Orbach of St. Louis. Wms. & Co. of Pittsburgh, and Service supply Co. of Indianapolis, became Albany distributors.

Cameron recalled that during WWII it was discovered that U.S. hardware was not compatible with Canadian and British sizes. The Industrial Fasteners Institute “undertook the vast project of working toward standardization” and in 1952 the American Standard B18.2 was adopted. “The cost for retooling was tremendous. We have subsequently had other changes in the ANSI Standards but nothing as dramatic as what happened in the fifties.”

After making sales calls on the West Coast in 1962 with San Francisco-based sales rep Everett Appleton, Cameron got Albany add San Carlos, CA, and Dallas branches to its Boston and Chicago ones.

Prior to the fax machine, Albany had an AT&T 24-hour, open line communication network “that put us in instant contact with each warehouse location.”
Albany and Stillwater Associates were sold to Pneumo Corp. in 1968 and in 1979 both were acquired by Brester Industries, the parent of Bell Fasteners.

In 1980 Cameron joined Allied Stainless and worked until the company moved to Wisconsin. Then she worked from home for T.A.&D.A. Troy Co. until 1991 when she joined AllMetal.

Editor’s Note: Edith Cameron can be e-mailed at: eacfsnr@optonline.net �2008 FastenerNews.com