Sangamo Electric Co. of Canada Ltd.

The burgeoning commercial and household consumption of electricity in Canada at the beginning of the 20^th century led to a huge demand for meters that could measure electrical usage, such as watthour meters. During the First World War, Canada increased its protectionist duties on the import of several products, including electrical meters. In response, several American electrical companies established subsidiaries in Canada in order to manufacture products in the country and thus avoid import duties. One of these was Sangamo Electric Company, an American company based in Illinois, that established manufacturing operations in Canada in 1916 in central Toronto, and expanded rapidly.

In the early 1920s, Sangamo developed the S-2 watthour meter, which was smaller than their existing model “H”, and supplanted the "II" and "S" models. The S-2 was manufactured exclusively at the English and Canadian branches of the company. The S-3 model, an improved version of the S-2, was developed at the engineering department of the Canadian factory in the late 1920s, and was still in production in the 1940s and 1950s. The "Polyphase" versions of the S-2 and S-3 were developed from the "Lincoln" meters previously sold by the company, which were developed by an American electrical engineer who founded a small meter company in Toronto at the same time as Sangamo arrived in the city.

In this era, all meters intended for commercial use in Canada, such as the S-3 were tested at the Department of Trade and Commerce, Electrical and Gas Standards Laboratories in Ottawa, to ensure that they were accurate. Example meters were kept there for reference--this particular instrument appears to be one of these, and represents this important element of the hugely important electrical manufacturing sector in Canada during the interwar decades.

The Sangamo factory was initially located at 183 George Street in central Toronto. In 1942, the company consolidated its manufacturing at 215 Laird Drive, Leaside, Toronto, a position that likely was in part to facilitate increased wartime production. This was especially the case with another important line the company manufactured, Wagner electric motors. The Leaside Sangamo factory, famous from the 1950s for its rotating sign, was a staple in the neighbourhood until it closed in the 1990s.