In 1946 Argus published an accounting of the state of the company that included a dozen pages of photographs of its wartime products. Argus had converted wholly to War Department work late in 1941 and began a halting conversion back to civilian camera production in the last months of 1945.

The report pages showed both the optical and radio products, but gave very little specific information on either. The optical products were relatively few in type (though produced in large numbers) and turned out to be easier to identify than the radio products. The optical products often had a distinctive shape or application that could be identified from wartime Army optical manuals. Early in the war some were marked “I. I. I.” (International Industries Incorporated, Argus’s corporate name during most of the war), and several were shown in wartime Argus ads in ways that clearly indicate their applications.

Except for the AZON equipment and the TS-170 test oscillator, Argus’s name did not appear on its radio production, most of which became part of various Bendix Radio products, often Bendix radio compass systems. The photos in the 1946 report never identified the Bendix product that used the Argus-made component. Instead, they were given generic names like “bomb control transmitter” (for the BC-1158) or “power driven band switch” (for a component in the BC-433 radio compass).

Identifying these components required the examination of the insides of any and all WWII airborne radios to be found. Our objective for the exhibit was to identify and collect every radio device shown in the 1946 report. After three years of eBaying, searches of “warbird” websites, and random searches of AAF manuals, garage sales, flea markets, and HAM swap meets, we were able to achieve about 50% of our objective.

The 6 pages of photos in this section were our starting points.