Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
NOMA (company)
Summary
NOMA was a company best known for making Christmas lights. It was once the largest manufacturer of holiday lighting in the world. As of 2021, the rights to the brand in Canada and the United States are owned by Canadian Tire, which sells NOMA-branded products through its namesake stores in Canada, and through an e-commerce website in the United States.
Electric Christmas lights were first used in 1882, but were not commercially available until around 1901, with pre-wired sets available by 1903. By 1920 they were popular, with a range of small and large manufacturers. The lighting sets, or "outfits", were of fixed length, with only limited and difficult to use options available to use more than one string together.
In 1921, Lester Haft filed a patent for a system to interconnect multiple strings. Several small companies licenses the patent from Haft's employer, C. D. Wood Electric. Morris Propp, whose company was the largest manufacturer of the Christmas light outfits, developed a competing interconnection system, and filed his own patent. The Haft patent () was granted in 1924, and Propp's () in 1926. Before either was granted, some companies licensed the Haft patent, while others developed their own systems that may have been in violation of one or both pending patents.
In late 1925, Joseph Bloch and Albert Sadacca organized a trade association of 15 of the Haft patent licensees, all small manufacturers, including C. D. Wood. Block named the trade group National Outfit Manufacturer's Association, or N. O. M. A., and later, simply NOMA. By joining together, the companies could consolidate purchasing and gain other efficiencies to improve their competitiveness. This was successful for the 1925 and 1926 seasons, and by the end of 1926, the companies agreed to formally merge into a single manufacturer bearing the NOMA name. NOMA branded light outfits were sold starting in the 1927 season.
Ironically, most of the original partners who formed NOMA were Jewish, and did not celebrate Christmas.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.