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on Seventh Avenue, with his mother’s sewing machine, he started what would become the second leading manufacturer of surgical supplies in the country.
    Lee adapted the sewing machine for the purpose of rolling of bandages and reeling surgeons’ silk. His purpose in the beginning was to produce a standard ligature material for surgeons. In just a few months, his growing business required larger quarters. Lee constructed a two-story building in his parents’ backyard, and with the extra working space, he added more products.
    In 1888, the J. Elwood Lee Company was incorporated. The original members of the company included Charles Heber Clark (Lee’s Sunday school teacher) as president of the organization; Charles Lukens, vice-president; J. Elwood Lee, treasurer, secretary and general manager; and Alan Wood Jr., Howard Wood and Conrad B. Lee on the board of directors. Conrad Lee passed away less than ten years later, and Frank R. Jones joined the board of directors. Later that year, in 1888, the company established a factory for the manufacture of woven catheters, the first and only factory in America at that time to produce such a product.
    In November 1893, the Lee Company participated in the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and was presented with the exposition’s five highest awards, including;
    For Woven Flexible Catheters
    For Surgeons’ Silk Ligatures
    For Lee’s Metallic Splints
    For Antiseptic Gauze in Glass Containers
    For General Hospital Supplies
    While Lee’s Surgical Works had been for years acknowledged by many leading surgeons, supply houses and hospitals throughout America, the Exposition Awards brought the Lee Company attention from around the world.
    Lee started buying out other small surgical supply companies, starting with Grosvenor & Richards, J.C. De La Cour, John Parker Manufacturing Company and a half dozen others. With all the acquisitions, by 1905 the J. Elwood Lee Company consisted of seventeen buildings located on East Eighth Avenue and Harry Street. (Part of Lee factory still stands today.) The factory covered more than five acres of floor space and employed more than five hundred Conshohocken residents.
    The Lee Company was the second leading manufacturer of surgical supplies in the country, only behind Johnson & Johnson from New Brunswick, New Jersey. Eventually, the two companies merged, and Mr. Lee became the executive vice-president of the Johnson & Johnson Company.
    By 1908, the automobile had surfaced as a rich man’s toy, and Lee was fascinated with the rubber tires. He felt that improvements could be made by utilizing the knowledge he had acquired of rubber and its characteristics in the manufacture of such goods as surgical tubing and rubber gloves. Lee had the wisdom of rubber, the engineers and the resources to make tires.
    By 1909, plans were underway for Lee to construct a tire factory. He purchased twenty-six acres from the Righter family in the Spring Mill section of town on the corner of Hector Street and North Lane, and by 1910, JELCO Tires was up and running. JELCO, a Lee trademark that had appeared on all his pharmaceutical supplies, stood for “John Elwood Lee Company.”
    When Lee discussed supplying Henry Ford tires for his cars rolling off the assembly line in Detroit, Michigan, his friend pointed out to Lee that printing the JELCO trademark on the side of his tires would make the public skeptical of riding on tires that sounded soft, as in “jelly.” It was then that Lee made the decision that would make his tire company famous all over the world with his trademark “Lee of Conshohocken” trademark.
    Lee’s first major breakthrough in the tire factory was his famous “Puncture Proof Tire.” His second would change the course of tire making throughout the world. Charles Goodyear tire factory introduced the vulcanization of rubber, allowing us to shape rubber products for many different uses. In 1912,