Admiral (electrical appliances)

Admiral is an American appliance brand currently manufactured by Whirlpool Corporation. The brand is sold at The Home Depot.

Ross Siragusa founded Continental Radio and Television Corp. as a maker of consumer electronics (radios and phonographs) in Chicago during 1934. This later became Admiral Corp. [ [http://www.ce.org/Events/Awards/480.htm Ross Siragusa bio] at the Consumer Electronics Hall of Fame] . Its annual sales were about $2 million. Admiral supplied the US military with electronic equipment during World War II, and was one of the major TV manufacturers in the early era of that medium, enabling it to branch out into major appliances such as refrigerators by the 1950s. During World War II, Admiral was the weekly sponsor of the CBS Radio Network Sunday news program, "World News Today", and Admiral used the promotional slogan "America's Smart Set". Annual sales approached $300 million and the company employed 8,500 people by the early 1960s.

The various divisions were sold to other companies by the mid-1970s due in part to competition from imported consumer electronic goods from Japan. Rockwell International acquired the company in 1973, selling the appliance operations to Magic Chef which was sold to Maytag which was acquired by Whirlpool.

The Milwaukee Admirals hockey team derives its name from Admiral appliances. In 1971 when the team was sold by its original owner to a group of investors, one of the investors, Edwin J. Merar, owned an appliance store. The team was renamed the "Admirals" after the Admiral refrigerators sold in his store.fact|date=June 2007

In 1991, Maytag contracted with Montgomery Ward & Co. for the exclusive use of the Admiral brand on its consumer electronic goods. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maytag#Chronology] Montgomery Ward later went bankrupt and closed all stores. After Maytag's sale to Whirlpool, the brand became exclusive to The Home Depot. During the 1990s, the Admiral brand name was being used on Zenith products.

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