I love these old enameled badges. This one was on an electric motor control box. I assumed that "Furnas" was a phonetic rendering of "furnace" for trade mark purposes. Not so.
According to the Batavia Historical Society:
In 1931, Carl Furnas left the Allis-Chalmers Co., at West Allis, Wisconsin, where he was assistant general plant manager after twenty-one years with the company.
Working in his basement with his wife, their daughter and two or three assistants, he started the Furnas Electric Company that grew to be one of the nation's outstanding producers of electric motor controls. The company moved into rented space in West Allis in 1934; and in October 1940, moved to McKee Street in Batavia. The company grew steadily until its products were sold all over the world.
In 1996, the company was merged with a German company and became known as the Siemens-Furnas Controls.
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