The Victoreen Instrument Company was a company created by John Austin Victoreen. John Victoreen was a self-taught physicist, engineer, inventor and otologist (like…studies of the ear and stuff).

Victoreen’s first career was as a radio and radio parts manufacturer in Cleveland during the early 1920s. By the age of 23, he had received the first of many patents to come. His first patent was for a high frequency tuning device that could be used in systems with radio frequency amplifiers of constant frequency. Some of his radio parts designs still exist today, with one notable one being the Heterodyne, which as the time was considered the “Rolls Royce” of radios.

By 1928, his interest had shifted to radiation measurement, and he founded the Victoreen Instrument Company in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Initially, the company manufactured an x-ray dosimeter invented by Hugo Fricke and Otto Glasser. Victoreen gained international fame when his company released the first commercial model – the Condenser-R meter, which was used to accurately measure the intensity of total dosage of X-ray exposure. His company had become known as the “first nuclear company.”

The Victoreen Instrument Company was responsible for providing 95% of the instruments used in the Bikini Atoll atomic tests after World War II. These are the tests that helped shape the story for Bikini Bottom (the bottom of the sea at the Bikini Atoll test site) in Spongebob Squarepants. Just think about it – if it weren’t for these tests (as horrible and dark as they were) and the Victoreen Company, Stephen Hillenburg may have never had the same ideas, and Spongebob Squarepants may never have existed (or been entirely different.) That’s a terrible thought.

Below are some images and a video from the Bikini Atoll atomic tests:

View more footage HERE

At some point during World War II, Victoreen was contracted by the Manhattan Project to develop portable radiation devices as part of the secret Operation Peppermint project leading up to D-Day. Operation Peppermint was the codename given during the war to preparations by the Manhattan Project and the European Theater of Operations United States Army to counter the danger that the Germans might disrupt the June 1944 Normandy landings with radioactive poisons. During initiation of Operation Peppermint, special equipment was prepared, including eleveln survey meters and a Geiger counter, which were shipped to England in early 1944, along with 1,500 film packets, which were used to measure radiation exposure levels. Another 25 survery meters, 5 Geiger counters and 1,500 film packets were held in storage in the United States, in readiness to be shipped by air with high priority should the need have arose. A great deal of time and effort were put into preparations, and with all of the equipment ready, it was later realized that these things were never needed, because the Germans had not developed such weapons that would have called for the use of any of it.

By 1950, Victoreen had shifted his interests once again, as he moved to Colorado Springs and joined the staff as a consulting physicist at the medical center in town. His interests then led him into the field of otology and optometry, which he would eventually publish a book on. Victoreen eventually left Colorado Springs, and moved to Maitland, Florida in 1962.

In 1965, the Victoreen Instrument Company became headquartered in Cleveland. For the next 29 years, they operated out of this location on Woodland Ave. until relocating in 1994. The factory saw many knew owners throughout following years, until finally being shuttered in 2007 when the final company moved out. The former Victoreen factory has sat abandoned now for 12 years, and nature is slowly bringing the structure down. Though portions were demolished in 2009, much of the structure still remains, but all manufacturing equipment has been moved.

Victoreen published two books – “Hearing Enhancement” and “Basic Principles of Otometry.” He had also filed 33 patents from 1926 to 1978, which included patents for things such as condenser microphone having a plurality of discrete vibratory surfaces, a high fidelity sound translating apparatus, pocket ionization chamber, electric battery, coin detecting and indicating apparatus and many more. Victoreen died on May 5, 1986 in Maitland, Florida.

When I visited the old disused factory, I had no idea who John Victoreen was, nor what he had done throughout his life. I did know that the factory played some part in the creation of Geiger counters and other radiation equipment, but didn’t see just how deep the history of the company went, or how integral Victoreen was to some pieces of history.

Offices inside the crumbling factory remain, though now barely intact and void of any furnishings. Much of the furniture, such as desks and chairs, had been scattered all throughout the factory floors. I wandered the dark and deserted hallways, looking into the various rooms as I stumbled along. Main rooms and offices are well-lit, with large windows mostly broken in the majority of them.

I peered into a room, which at some point had been sectioned off from one of the main floors. My eyes followed the cracking tile floors, which met flaking blue walls. The blue paint peeled back to reveal green and gray beneath it; colors of its previous lives. The ceiling, now stained with various mildews and molds, collapses in sections. Fallen squares lie scattered along a carpet of moss, which now grows wildly atop the tile floor. Rapid deterioration has been caused throughout the structure by natural elements. I could hear water pouring in through broken ceilings throughout the factory, and found that the lowest floors had been flooded entirely. Shattered glass covers factory floors, stairs are missing from stairwells, and graffiti lines the walls. The factory lies in shambles. During its years of abandonment, it seems to have become a dumping ground for trash, among some other terrible things, leaving much of the lot full of filth. Too many people just don’t care.