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.