Collection search - Maurice Levy fonds [textual record, graphic material, technical drawing]

Record information – Brief
1
Maurice Levy fonds [textual record, graphic material, technical drawing]

Hierarchical level:

Fonds

Date:

1914-1973.

Reference:

R11268-0-7-E, MG31-B59

Type of material:

Textual material, Photographs, Architectural and technical drawings

Found in:

Archives / Collections and Fonds

Item ID number:

213961

Context of this record:

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Maurice Levy fonds
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Record information – Details

Fonds includes:

10 lower level description(s)
View lower level description(s)

Date(s):

1914-1973.

Place of creation:

Canada

Added country of publication:

France, United Kingdom, United States, Japan, Germany, Netherlands

Extent:

3.67 m of textual records.
ca. 870 photographs : b&w and col., negatives and slides.
217 technical drawings : 54 blueprints and 82 whiteprints.

Language of material:

English

Scope and content:

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Levy's textual material includes his curriculum vitae, university and research work in France and Britain, offprints and patents 1933-1951. His work for the Canadian Post Office 1952-1959 consists of files on the design of letter sorting machinery such as the two-window coding desks and letter traps plus related patent applications. Levy Associates Co.'s (LAC) correspondence, proposals, contracts and files with U.S. Post Office for letter and parcel sorting systems, coding studies and evaluations, training manuals, keyboard and character recognition studies from the 1960s plus a 1969 Canadian postal code study. LAC outgoing correspondence 1969-1972 and agreements with American companies. Files on LAC research and development projects, publicity for new products, agreements and estimate files. Files on Levy's Communications System Co. Canadian, American, British and French patent regulations, applications and licences. Also included are drawings and publications.

Photography consists of 869 black and white and colour prints, negatives and slides dating from about 1938 to about 1970. They include family activities in France in the late 1930s; some documents relating to Levy's technical/scientific work in Britain; but are primarily concerned with his enterprises in Canada. These include photographs about United Metal Works; Levy Associates Co. Ltd.; Communications Systems Co.; and include considerable documentation (1952-1962) about the equipment, components, assembly, demonstrations, testing, and setups of various letter sorting machines developed by LAC for potential use in Canada and the United
States. Other photographs (primarily from the mid to late 1960s) document announcement systems, a weather broadcaster, printed circuit boards and other electrical assemblies made by his firms, and include internal and external views of equipment, equipment in use, and publicity shots.

Provenance:

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Levy, Maurice, 1908-1996

Biography/Administrative history:

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Levy, Maurice, 1908-1996 : Maurice (Moise) Levy was born in Alexandria (Egypt) in 1908. He studied mathematics and physics at the Univesité de Paris, 1927-30 and did advanced research at the College de France, 1930-35. Levy then joined the French branch of International Telephone and Telegraph, carrying out radio and telephone research. In 1940 he escaped to Britain and started working for Standard Telephones and Cables Co., the British branch of IT&T, continuing his telephone and radio research. In 1945 he joined General Electric of UK, working at their Wembley Research Laboratories. Levy had more than 60 joint patents with his employers in Britain.

Levy immigrated to Canada in 1950 and briefly worked for the Defence Research Board. In 1952 he presented a series of ideas to the Canadian Post Office on automating letter sorting. He was named head of the Post Office Research Laboratory, reporting directly to the Deputy Post Master General. Over the next seven years, Levy and a small team successfully developed facing and letter sorting machines, coding procedures etc. However long delays in combining these components together into a workable system caused the Diefenbaker Government to cancel the project in Feb. 1959.

In the same year Levy formed Levy Associates Co. Ltd. (LAC) to do research and development work for the U.S. Post Office (USPO) with which he had developed a close association. For the next six years Levy and his employees worked on postal coding studies, letter coding machines, training machines and learning rates.

In 1965 Levy decided to broaden his company's base and commercially develop some of the ideas he had patented. These included display systems for public announcements and stock exchanges, automatic telephone answering systems, automatic tape announcement systems for weather broadcasts and airports. Levy also created other companies such as Communications Systems Co. (CSC) and Data-Speech International (DSI) to market his products. Though these companies sold a number of LAC systems, development costs were very high and Canadian and foreign companies were not willing to take a chance on this young company. Levy wound up LAC in 1973 and retired. Maurice Levy died on 29 Nov. 1996 in Ottawa.

Finding aid:

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Textual material, graphic material technical drawings (Electronic) Finding aid is a file list for volumes 1 to 19. MSS2142 (90: Open)
http://data2.archives.ca/pdf/pdf002/p000003280.pdf

Additional information:

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Custodial history:

Received from Mrs. Alice Levy of Ottawa in 1997.

Source:

Private

Related control no.:

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1997-03006-3
1997/0069
MG31-B59

Former archival reference no.:

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MG31-B59
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Conditions of access:

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Textual records

[Consultation90 Open]

Graphic (photo)

[Consultation90 Open]

Architectural: technical drawings

[Consultation90 Open]

Volume [R11268] 17

[Consultation 90 Open]

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Date modified:: 2024-06-27