H. W. Sullivan
1897 - 1922
H. W. Sullivan was founded by Herbert Watson Sullivan (1856-1925) in 1897, in London. The company manufactured precision laboratory equipment.
Herbert Watson Sullivan (1856-1925) apprenticed for three years with Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, LTD, starting in 1870. He then joined the Eastern Telegraph Company, where he assisted C. V. de Sauty with duplex telegraph experiments along the 365 NM Lisbon-Gibraltar submarine cable. The underseas cable industry became his working home. He formed his own business, H. W. Sullivan, in London in 1897.
Sullivan saw an opportunity for developing better instrumentation for submarine cable testing and telegraphy. He patented a moving mirror galvanometer, which became widely used. It was known as "Sullivan's Galvanometer."
In 1922, Sullivan made his business a limited company. (See record for H. W. Sullivan, Ltd.) The firm manufactured precision electrical instruments, such as telegraph signalling equipment, Kelvin bridges, Wheatstone bridges, standard resistors, capacitors, ammeters, dry cell batteries, RF and audio amplifiers (5 and 6 tube), buzzers, chokes, RF tuning units, reactance coils, condensers, grid leaks, resistors, potentiometers, rheostats, headphones, receivers, transformers, and radio telephone transmitters.