Rene Martines, who co-founded ETCO with Joe Dunn, had a patent, which ETCO capitalized on by incorporating in 1947.

Rene's idea was to place the "blades," as we call them (you know, the part you plug into the wall; see photo), in a strip and on reels so that, rather than soldering them one at a time by hand, two could be crimped to a wire at a time. For our two main clients at the time, American Insulated Wire Corp. and Belden Wire and Cable, this resulted in a manpower savings and a tenfold improvement in production speed.