A native of Ontario, Canada, Colin B. Kennedy left home while a young teenager and became a telegraph operator.
He found his way to Canada’s west coast as wireless was coming into vogue. He would spend seven years working at Palo Alto-based Federal Telegraph Company, developing the technical skills that led him to launch the Colin B. Kennedy Corporation in 1919.
The company was originally set up to supply receivers to experimenters and hobbyists, but Kennedy had arrived on the scene at the perfect time. Radio was booming, and the Kennedy Corporation’s San Francisco factory was soon building high-quality radio receivers for the consumer market.
Kennedy set up an experimental transmitter in Los Altos, eventually receiving a full commercial license for station KLP. 1920s newspaper reports from rural California locations indicate these early transmissions were picked up far from the Bay Area. On at least one occasion, the station’s signal was received in Kansas.
KLP lasted only until 1923. Colin B. Kennedy’s radio-building business merged with Wagner Electric and moved to St. Louis, where changing business conditions led to bankruptcy in 1926. Kennedy launched another radio-building enterprise with George Studebaker in 1928.
Colin B. Kennedy died in 1942 at age 57.