Metcom

Metcom operated in Salem, Massachusetts, at 76 Lafayette Street. Its name was an acronym for Microwave Electronic Tube Company of Massachusetts, accurately describing a business focused on microwave electronic tubes rather than ordinary valves for domestic radios. In 1962 the company appeared in records of a high-power microwave tube symposium co-sponsored by the U.S. Signal Research and Development Laboratory. Richard J. Broderick was its president the following year. These references place Metcom in the American radio-frequency industry without assigning it a founding date that the available records do not establish.

A backlog of orders led Metcom in 1966 to acquire a property across from its Lafayette Street premises. The expansion added 15,000 square feet of manufacturing space and brought the stated total to 96,000. An undated catalog, attributed approximately to the early 1970s, later listed 115,000 square feet, as well as high- and low-power test facilities, brazing equipment and high-vacuum exhaust facilities. The same catalog listed magnetrons, klystrons, tetrodes, external-cavity TR tubes and gas-switching duplexer tubes: distinct families used to generate, amplify or switch microwave signals. The range also included duplexers and microwave cavities, associated apparatus or components that should not be mistaken for tubes. The sequence of reported floor areas traces the workshop's growth; the undated catalog cannot, however, establish the production year of each individual type.