Photos Courtesy of Jane Wilcox Olney

Chester Martin Wilcox (1895-1958) was born in 1895 to Byron Wilcox and Jane (Thorburn) Wilcox in Holt, Michigan. A prominent Holt family, Chester’s great-grandfather Benjamin Ohlinger built a farm in Delhi Township just after the Civil War, which was passed down in the family to his grandparents and became the Wilcox farm. Wilcox Road and school were named after the family.

Chester attended Holt Schools from his early years through the tenth grade in 1910. At this time, Holt only offered through the tenth grade curriculum. After complete Holt’s educational offerings, he went on to Lansing High School in 1911. Chester went on to attend Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) to study electrical engineering. In 1910, at age fifteen, Chester started his small company Wilcox Radios. Early on in the company, Chester moved to Charlotte, Michigan.

While in Charlotte, Wilcox Radios manufactured amateur radio components and kits on West Lawrence Avenue. By 1926, they added consumer radios to their operations. In 1931, Paul Gay joined Chester Wilcox, forming the Wilcox-Gay Corporation. Wilcox and Gay moved their operation into the old Bennett Furniture factory in Charlotte and expanded their business to include tape decks, reel-to-reel, television, police radios, and record players. In 1939, they launched their most noted product: the Recordio. With advertisements in Life Magazine and beyond, the Wilcox-Gay Recordio was highly successful, having sold 25,000 units in the first year. Musicians like Les Paul and Johnny Cash recorded using Recordios. The machines recorded 78 rpm transcriptions with decent fidelity. The Great Depression hurt the company, and the new adoption of magnetic tape recordings was also a major blow to the company.

In 1950, Leonard Ashbach of the Leonard Aschbach Company acquired controlling interest in Wilcox-Gay. By 1955, all of Aschbach’s holdings were conslidated into Grundig-Majestic.

Chester Wilcox died in 1958 and is buried in Maple Hill Cemetery in Charlotte.