Milo G. Kellogg was born into a prominent, wealthy New England family. He attended prep school, and received two degrees in engineering from the University of Rochester. He married a member of one of Chicago's most prestigious families, and relocated to Illinois. In the 1880s, Kellogg was a manager at Western Electric as superintendent of its Chicago manufacturing and research plant, and also at the Southern Telephone and Telegraph Company. In 1897, with expiring, Kellogg established a manufacturing firm, the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company. Kellogg himself held more than 150 patents, and had invented the divided multiple telephone switchboard, which became the flagship product of the new company. This switchboard offered greater flexibility and efficiency than earlier designs in handling a large telephone subscriber base at urban exchanges. Kellogg primarily supplied local independent telephone companies.
Fight for control
In 1901, Kellogg fell seriously ill. His brother-in-law, Wallace DeWolf, proved to be a poor manager. Concerned that the company might fail, DeWolf secretly sold a majority of Kellogg's stock to Western Electric. Easily manipulated by Western Electric executives and legal advisors, DeWolf also helped Western Electric attempt to take over the country's other large telephone equipment manufacturer, Stromberg-Carlson. A bitter stockholder fight ensued, which led to Stromberg-Carlson's reincorporation as a New York state corporation in 1902. Milo Kellogg recovered his health, and discovered what DeWolf had done. Kellogg sued to stop the sale of his stock. In two separate decisions by the Supreme Court of Illinois—Brown v. Cragg, 230 Ill. 299 and Dunbar v. American Telephone and Telegraph, 238 Ill. 456 —Kellogg retained ownership of his company.
The company prospered in the early 20th century. It introduced the Relaymatic automatic switching system in 1939 and a crossbar switching system in 1950. The ITT Corporation purchased a controlling interest in the Kellogg Switchboard & Supply Company in 1951, rebranding the new division's equipment as ITT Kellogg for a decade. It then became ITT Telecommunications, but reverted to ITT Kellogg in 1986. Among ITT Kellogg's acquisitions in the 1950s was telephone manufacturer Federal Telephone & Radio. In 1958, ITT Kellogg was a contractor to the U.S. Air Force, for which Kellogg build a ground communication system for the ballistic missile base at Cooke Air Force Base. In 1989, ITT sold its telecommunications product lines, including ITT Kellogg, to Alcatel, now Alcatel-Lucent. The company's US operations were later sold and privatized. The remaining business of Kellogg is conducted by Cortelco Kellogg, owned by Cortelco and is based in Corinth, Mississippi. On December 12, 2008 eOn Communications announced an agreement to acquire Cortelco Systems Holding Corporation.
