Jump to Content

Collection Guide
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Collection Overview
 
Table of contents What's This?
Description
Biographical materials, correspondence, photographs, certificates and other ephemera relating to Douglas McDonald Perham (1885-1967) and Constance Broner Kambish Perham (1908-2001).
Background
Douglas M. Perham was born in Duarte, California, on May 22, 1985. He began his career in electronics in 1902 when he set up a machine shop in Palo Alto, California at age 17. In 1909, Perham became Federal Telegraph Company's first American technician and its installation engineer on early arc radio installations throughout the West. His cottage at 913 Emerson in Palo Alto became Federal's first Palo Alto laboratory. After marrying his second wife, Pearl, they relocated to her home town of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where they operated radio WJAM, one of the first licensed broadcasting stations in Iowa. In 1928 they returned to California, and Perham rejoined Federal Telegraph Company only to be laid off in 1931. During the Depression, he pieced together a business doing general machine work and die cutting, then joined Varian Associated in 1948. Perham's extensive collection of electronics apparatus mirrors his own career and includes donations from Lee de Forest, Ralph Heinz, the Varian brothers, Charles "Doc" Herrold, and Leonard Fuller. With his third wife, Constance, he operated the New Almaden Museum, that was later transferred to the new Foothill Electronics Museum at Foothill College. Constance Perham took an active role after Doug's death in 1967, to make sure the collection was transferred, and later, after the disengagement of the college from the Perham Foundation and its collections in the 1980s, for the transfer of the Perham Collection of Early Electronics to History San Jose in 2003.
Extent
2 linear feet
Restrictions
Contact the Curator of Library & Archives with regard to publication or reproduction.
Availability
The papers are open to the public for research by appointment with the Curator of Library & Archives.