In 1955 Henkels & McCoy employs over 1,200
people in 31 states operating from six branch offices. The company does
work for 14 power companies and 23 telephone companies, from the East to
Missouri and South to Florida. Projects this year run the gamut, from bituminous paving for
school districts, a major oil refinery and hospitals to the installation
of a modern telephone system at the Lajes Air Force Base in Terceira
Island, Azores... We install street lighting at the Delaware River Bridge
Toll Plaza for the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission... H&M will install over
1,300 mercury vapor lighting units along the entire length of the Ohio
Turnpike this year as well as light the Route 42 approach to the new Walt
Whitman Bridge spanning the Delaware from New Jersey to South Philadelphia
for the New Jersey State Highway Department... H&M Founder
Jack Henkels is featured in an article in the local Germantown newspaper,
The Germantown Courier, in the company's 32nd year of operation. The article
speaks to the quality of Henkels & McCoy employees and is
subtitled "Give the Other Fellow a Chance." The article ends
with a typical quote from Jack Henkels: "The
backbone of our business is the men who work for us. If we ever forget
them, we deserve to go broke."January 2
Panamanian president Jose Remon is assassinated.
January 19
The board game Scrabble is marketed.
February 23
Initial meeting of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), the
Pacific version of NATO.
March 2
King Sihanouk of Cambodia relinquishes throne to his father.
March 4
The first radio facsimile transmission is sent across America. Above:
Henkels & McCoy technicians repair commercial facsimile transceivers for
telephone companies during the 1950s from our Elkhart, Indiana office.
Commercial grade telephone modems are also reconditioned and repaired from
that facility.
April 5
Winston S.
Churchill resigns as Prime Minister of Great Britain due to health
reasons.
April 18
Albert Einstein, (left) father of the Theory of Relativity, dies in Princeton,
New Jersey.
July 17
Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California.
September 28
First telecast of a World Series game in color.
December 1
Montgomery, Alabama, bus driver orders Mrs. Rosa Parks to give up her seat
to a white man. When she refuses, she is arrested and fined (right). Mrs.
Parks is the secretary of the Montgomery, Alabama, NAACP (National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and a tailor's
assistant at the Montgomery Fair department store. Other local women are
also arrested for violating segregation laws, including Aurelia S. Browder,
Susie McDonald, Claudette Colvin, and Mary Louise Smith.
December 5
Mrs. Parks' arrest results in thousands of leaflets being distributed,
calling for a boycott of city buses beginning this day. Mrs. Parks is also
convicted of violating local segregation laws today and is fined $14.
After negotiations between Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and the
city of Montgomery fail, the bus boycott is extended, and will last for
381 days.
December 31
General Motors achieves annual sales of more than one billion dollars, the
first American corporation to do so.
