The company was founded by Reuben Berkley Benjamin and filed its first patent for an electric lamp socket in 1898.
One of Benjamin's most notable products was their series of non-contact fire alarm horns, introduced in the early 1920s.
After graduation, Mr. Benjamin entered the chosen field of his profession, as employed by the Commonwealth Edison Company in Chicago.
He launched a business from his Chicago home's basement with his wife, Annie Knott Benjamin as his bookkeeper.
Reuben was the head of the Benjamin Electric Manufacturing Company, which expanded from Chicago to New York, San Francisco, Toronto, Canada and London, England.
In addition to the wireless cluster, he was the inventor of the weatherproof, one-piece socket-reflector dome lighting system, the swivel plug, the Benjamin Crysteel Porcelain Enameled products (e.g. table tops, stove parts, washing machine tubs, refrigerators, refrigerator linings, and similar products), the “Benco” socket, “Benox” interchangeable devices, two-way plugs, many designs of industrial lighting equipment, safety lighting for oil refineries and places where gases or explosive dusts are present, besides hundreds of wiring improvements, many of which have been generally adopted.
The R. L. M. reflector dome and others developed by the Benjamin Company have had a profound influence in the improvement of industrial illumination, and it is difficult to estimate the dollar value of the increased production and efficiency that have resulted since their introduction.
I depend much on flashes of insight and you’d be surprised how often you can cut ‘cross lots toward your goal when you start with an unprejudiced mind.” After getting as far as possible on one of those direct line hunches he would then begins the necessary check-up for possible patent infringements and other practical considerations.
For the first time lighting designed to make television and colour motion picture photography possible was likewise the most effective that could have been devised for viewing the great spectacle by those people seated in the Abbey; for people at great distances from the crowning, it was just as necessary to have 120 Ft. c. there as it is on the stage of a theatre, and yet it was provided in a way that was infinitely more kind to the principals who took part and who continued under it for some three hours.