Gargantua’s Baby

With competition in the U.S. television industry growing hotter by the day, manufacturers were cudgeling their brains for new ways to trim costs and prices. In Chicago, Admiral Corp.’s quick-stepping President Ross Siragusa thought he knew a good way to do it. On the big, fancy-looking console jobs, about one-third of the cost went into furniture. Why not start cutting there?

Siragusa talked it over with his younger brother Dominic, 35, who runs Chicago’s Molded Products Corp. For $90,000, Dominic had picked up a huge, 2,000-ton-pressure hydraulic molding press which had once stamped out shell casings.

Dom Siragusa had to knock the roof off his plastics plant to lower the 40-foot press into place on its 6-ft.-thick concrete base. Finally, the hissing, throbbing monster (Dom calls it “Gargantua”) was ready for trial. It pressed down on $6.50 worth of preheated blocks of phenol plastic and molded a complete 35-lb. cabinet, the biggest plastic “casting” made so far in the U.S.

This week Dom was turning out 225 cabinets a day at one-half to one-third the cost of wooden ones. In them Brother Ross was installing 10-inch screen television sets. The price: $249.95, about $50 cheaper than the closest competitive model. Siragusa raised Admiral’s 1949 production goal from 400,000 units to 500,000, planned to spend $1,000,000 this month alone in advertising.