Written by Ronald W. Cox

On August 12th 1953, General Motors experienced one of it largest disasters in its history. A 1.5 million square foot transmission plant (Hydra-Matic) at Livonia, Michigan was destroyed by fire. General Motors made many improvements to its plants after this fire and one was install plant protection monitoring systems. In early 1960s, the "traditional suppliers" of such monitoring systems looked like equipment from Edison's or Marconi's labs and were made of springs, motors, and primitive electrical components. Delco Radio had been making modern static (solid state) machine controls for a few years and had been building control systems for automation in factories with logic modules with the brand name "Del-Con". This group at Delco Radio was requested to build a central monitoring system for the Chevrolet Norwood plant in Norwood, Ohio. Soon there was a request to build another such system for the Pontiac Plants in Pontiac, Michigan. From these two systems a business was started to develop, build, and assist in the installation of plant monitoring systems by a group of digital system engineers at Delco Radio in Kokomo, Indiana.

Typical items monitored were sprinkler water flow switches, fire alarm boxes, patrol report switches, water pumps, emergency generators, water valves, and security doors. A typical GM plant had hundreds of these "points" of interest and these systems monitored all of them and provided a visual indicator, an audible alarm, and a printout of the time and location when ever the status of one of these points changed.

The systems Delco Radio, and later Delco Electronics built evolved over time to better and more sophisticated systems.

Three basic System designs were made and are referenced here by the installation locations:

I. (1963-1967) Delco Radio Del-Con logic modules based systems using a Notifier printer:

    1. Chevrolet Norwood, Ohio

    2. Pontiac, Pontiac, Michigan

    3. Buick City, Flint, Michigan

    4. GMAD, Lordstown, Ohio

    5. Delco Radio, Plant 8, Kokomo, Indiana

    6. Delco Products, Dayton, Ohio

    7. Chevrolet Gear and Axle, Detroit, Michigan

    8. Chevrolet Truck Assembly, Flint, Michigan

    9. Chevrolet Metal Fabrication, Flint, Michigan

II. (1967-1970) Delco Electronics D-350 Systems using integrated circuits, ultrasonic delay line memories, transformer read only memories, supervised alarm circuits (see reference below), and teleprinters (all logic was hard wired):

D-350 System at Delco Electronics, Kokomo, Indiana, 1970

    10. Chevrolet, Cleveland, Ohio

    11. Chevrolet, Toledo, Ohio

    12. GM Technical Center, Warren, Michigan

    13. Chevrolet Engine Plant, Tonawanda, New York

    14. Chevrolet Engine Foundry, Tonawanda, New York

    15. Delco Products, Rochester, New York

    16. AC Spark Plug/Delco Electronics, Oak Creek, Wisconsin

    17. Packard Electric Division, Warren, Ohio

    18. Delco Remy, Anderson, Indiana

    19. Chevrolet Truck Plant, Indianapolis, Indiana

    20. Fisher Body, Lansing, Michigan
   
    21. Packard Electric Engineering Building, Warren, Ohio

III. (1970-1978) Delco Electronics D-351 and Diebold Inc. DGM-320 Systems using minicomputers, and standardized rack mounted modules. Supervised alarm circuits were standard, many systems used remote units for telemetry back to the central console:

D-351 System at Delco Electronics, Kokomo, IN, 1974

    22. Central Foundry Division, Defiance, Ohio

    23. GMC Truck and Coach Division, Pontiac, Michigan

    24. Detroit Diesel Allison Division, Indianapolis, Indiana

    25. GM Proving Ground, Milford, Michigan

    26. GM Building, Detroit, Michigan

    27. GM Building, New York, New York

    28. Delco Remy, Anderson, Indiana

    29. Milwaukee Railroad, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

    30. Fisher Body, Cleveland , Ohio

    31. Diebold Display Hall, North Canton, Ohio

    32. Diebold/Mellon Bank, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 

    33. Diebold/Chemical Bank, New York, New York

    34. Diebold/Irving Trust Bank, New York, New York

    35. Diebold/First National Bank, Louisville, Kentucky

    36. Diebold/Lincoln First Bank, Rochester, New York

    37. Diebold/Philadelphia National Bank, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

    38. Diebold/Bank of Canada, Ottawa, Canada

    39. Diebold/Chase Manhattan Bank, New York, New York

    40. Diebold/MHT Bank, New York, New York

    41. Diebold/First Dallas Bank, Dallas, Texas

    42. Diebold/Pan National Bank, El Paso, Texas

    43. Diebold/Armco Steel, Middletown, Ohio

    44. Diebold/Boatman's Bank, St. Louis, Missouri

    45. Diebold/New Jersey Bank, West Paterson, New Jersey

    46. Diebold/United California Bank, Los Angeles, California

    47. Diebold/Bankers Trust Bank, New York, New York

    48. Diebold/National Commercial Bank, Albany, New York

    49. Diebold/National Shawmut Bank, Boston, Massachusetts

    50. Diebold/The Hardford Insurance, Hardford, Rhode Island

    51. Diebold/Mercantile Trust Bank, St. Louis, Missouri

In 1978, Delco Electronics's Digital Systems business was sold to Dayton Research Labs, in Dayton. Ohio. All System documentation for Diebold's systems was provided to Diebold, Inc. in North Canton, Ohio with permission to continue to produce the components for the DGM-320 system. All personnel working on these systems at Kokomo were reassigned to other jobs. The reason the business was sold is that the Digital Systems experienced engineers were needed to develop Engine Control Modules for GM vehicles that comply with the 1981 Clean-Air Act. By 1988 Delco Electronics was shipping 28,000 engine control modules per day.