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Morse
Instrument Company During World War Two This page added 10-26-2022. The Morse Instrument Company was started by John Morse to provide photographic equipment for the United State Army Air Forces. Between 1927 and 1931, Mr. Morse had previously been a photographic instructor for the Army Air Corps at Chanute Field, IL. When he left the service, he went to work for B.F. Goodrich in Akron, OH in its experimental department. At the same time, he spent time at home experimenting with various photographic equipment. This work led to Mr. Morse inventing a film developer that, in 1941, resulted in a $16,000 contract from the photographic section at Wright Field in Ohio. With this contract from the Army Air Forces, Mr. Morse left B.F. Goodrich in early 1941 and began a small operation with four employees in Hudson, OH. As the war progressed, his company grew to become the largest in Hudson, OH, employing 240 workers at its peak. The company's post World War Two direction came by accident when Mr. Morse went for a ride in one his employee's speedboats. Offered the opportunity to steer the boat, Mr. Morse found it very difficult to control the speed. This led him to develop a simpler one lever throttle control.
In 1969, John Morse sold Morse Instrument Company and the new owners renamed the company Morse Controls. SeaStar Solutions purchased Morse Controls in 2001, and while discontinuing some of the Morse boat throttle and steering controls, it continued to manufacture the most popular Morse products as SeaStar products.
Morse Instrument Company World War Two Products: The company had $3,977,000 in major contracts during World War Two. All of them were from the United States Army Air Forces for photographic equipment. $2,412,000, or 60% of the company's major contracts was for the N-6 gun camera as shown below. $2,753,000, or 69% of the major contracts came after March 1944.
The Morse Instrument Company N-6 Gun Camera: The N-6 gun camera was a Bell & Howell design which was based on the company's commercial 16mm movie camera. The N-6 was used in both U.S. Army and U.S. Navy fighters and bombers to verify that the pilot of a fighter plane or a gunner on a bomber actually shot down the enemy aircraft that he claimed. Four other companies besides Bell & Howell in Chicago, IL produced the N-6 camera during World War Two. They were Fairchild Aviation Company of New York, The Lackner Company of Cincinnati, OH, Gordon Enterprises of North Hollywood, CA, and the Morse Instrument Company of Hudson, OH. The N-6 shown below was built by the Morse Instrument Company and is on display at the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force in Pooler, GA. I consider the Morse Instrument Company N-6 gun camera shown below as an important find and worthy of publishing this webpage on the company. This is the only Morse gun camera I have found in my research. All of the other gun cameras I have found were produced by the Fairchild Aviation Company, which was a significant producer of camera equipment used by the USAAF during World War Two. By publishing this page, Morse Instrument Company gets the credit it deserves for helping to win World War Two.
The N-6 camera was also used in American aircraft during the Korean War. All of the gun camera footage now seen in documentaries of these two wars was taken with an N-6 camera.
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