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With the decline in the price of Mica, and a concurrent lessening of demand as other technologies were developed, Glenn Powers and his partners in Perfection Mica began an earnest search for their next enterprise. The use of Mica in the electronics industry led them to investigate the growth of their Magnetic Shield Division’s involvement in aerospace, medical, television, telephone, radio, appliance and pure research.

Driving that growth were proprietary methods for creating high permeability alloys as a magnetic shielding, which became more important as sensitive electronic applications were developed during WWII.

It became apparent after several years of pursuing one opportunity after another that the fledgling Perfection Mica Company needed to re-invent itself. Designing and producing shields for magnetic interference was the solution settled upon, and by the mid 1940s, both Mica products and magnetic shields were being produced in their factory on North Elston Avenue in Chicago.

By the mid-50s, magnetic shields overtook the Mica business, and Magnetic Shield Corporation officially became the primary enterprise in 1956.

An early trademark, “Magna-Shield”, had been coined in the 1940s to differentiate their proprietary shielding materials.

Specifications were on record at the Navy, Army, RCA, Raytheon and a number of university research institutes.

Then fate intervened. When application was made to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in the early 1950s for trademark protection of “Magna-Shield”, it was denied!

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