Dukane's History

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Chicago Tribune
July 14, 1996

Celebrating Dukane's 75th Anniversary

A brand new late-1930's Chrysler sat parked in front of the Baker Hotel on Main Street in St. Charles. "I want to tell you about some of my features," the automobile said to a passerby.

Stunned, the pedestrian halted mid-step. The car continued, "If you'll step back from the door I'll open it."

Jack Stone, born in 1927, watched the event unfold when he was 7 years old, knowing that the technology that made the car talk was developed by his father, J. McWilliams Stone, founder of the company Operadio.

Renamed Dukane Corporation, the company today is a leading manufacturer and marketer of advanced technology products with sales to customers worldwide.

The success of the company can be traced largely to the work and personalities of two men, J. McWilliams Stone Sr. and J. McWilliams Stone Jr. (who likes to be called Jack)

Stone Sr. attended the Armour Institute (now called Illinois Institute of Technology) on the South Side of Chicago and graduated from there in 1920. He was always interested in radios and had his first one when he was 11 or 12. A picture of the radio hangs on the wall of the board room of Dukane. He started the portable radio manufacturing company Operadio in 1922, and the business did well until the crash of Wall Street sparked the great depression.
"Like many other people, he went bankrupt," Stone said, "but he was able to keep the company going, paid off all his debts, then went into the manufacturing of loudspeakers.

The business boomed when Stone Sr. started picking up lots of military contracts. "We think that at that time, Operadio was the biggest maker of loudspeakers in the country, maybe even the world," Stone said.

After World War II, Stone Sr. decided he wanted to phase out of selling to the military and switch over to the public marketplace. He tapped Stone Jr. to launch a new phase of his business. Young Stone at the time was working in Milwaukee for A. B. Dick, then manufacturer of mimeograph equipment.

His father traveled there to ask him to come to work for him, but young Stone had his own set of conditions: "I made a deal that I would never have to report to my father and that's how it worked out." He credits his father with being "a hell of an engineer and salesman."

The latter is the one thing the two of them had in common, he said. "I am basically a salesman, that's what I am good at. I know what really counts is what's in the other guy's mind, not what I think." But he has a great mind, too, said his daughter Jean Stone. "He's very much a people person, but he's also very involved in science and physics. He knows the technology."

Since Dukane moved to its 39-acre site in 1971, the company has expanded several times. From an anchor building size of 178,000 square feet, three other additions totaling 80,000 square feet have been added, including the glass encased Tech Center, built in 1988. Dukane has evolved into three main divisions which operate pretty much independently.

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