The Bryant Electric Company was a manufacturer of wiring devices, electrical components, and switches founded in 1888 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, United States. It grew to become for a time both the world's largest plant devoted to the manufacture of wiring devices and Bridgeport's largest employer and was involved in a number of notable strikes, before being closed in 1988 and having its remaining interests sold to Hubbell in 1991. Founding and growth Bryant was founded by Waldo Calvin Bryant in 1888 (incorporated 1889) in Bridgeport, Connecticut, with seven employees working in a loft on John Street in Bridgeport. Waldo Bryant and others at Bryant invented and patented a number of switch and electrical component designs, including "the first push-pull switch". Although responsible for more than 500 patents by 1935, Bryant's most significant contribution to the wiring devices industry was the idea of standardization. For example, in 1888 there were eight different types of electrical light bases. Bryant led the industry to accept standardized devices. Bryant grew quickly and, in 1890, acquired the Standard Electric Time Company and Empire China Works. In 1891, Bryant relocated to a former school building owned by P. T. Barnum off State Street and, by 1905, employed 700 people. Perkins Electric Switch Company was acquired in 1899, with the employees and plant relocating to Bridgeport. Waldo Bryant needed more capital for expansion and sold the majority interest to Westinghouse Electric in 1901, though he continued to run the company as the Bryant Electric subsidiary of Westinghouse until 1927. One reason for downplaying the Westinghouse ownership was to keep Bryant distributors who had exclusive franchises to sell products of Westinghouse's competitors from dropping the Bryant line. For a time, Bryant was Bridgeport's largest employer and, by 1912, its plant in Bridgeport's West End was the largest in the world "devoted exclusively to the manufacture of wiring devices". As electrical components began to be made with plastic, Bryant acquired Hemco Plastics Company in 1928. By that year, Bryant was selling over 4,000 different products. By 1938, the plant had grown to and employed 1,537 people, increased to 1,600 in 1946. Labor relations At the time of Bryant's founding and rapid growth Bridgeport's West End was a dense, congested working-class neighborhood and a large population of mostly Hungarian immigrants, as well as Swedes, Slovenians and French Canadians, lived to the south of the industrial zone where Bryant was located.