The Dayton Steel Racquet Company

First Published April, 2010

Post 1974 DaytonTrademark

If you were asked to name which tennis racquet manufacturer sold its racquets for over 70 years and had connections to a seven-time U.S. Singles champion, Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, the first NFL football game ever played and the Wright Brothers, it would be logical to choose a large, big-city company like Wilson or Spalding as the answer. However, the unlikely company in question that possessed these worldly credentials, the Dayton Steel Racquet Company, hailed from a small town of less than 2,000 people in western Ohio.

Virtually every tennis collection that I have viewed over the years has contained at least one Dayton tennis “racquet” and despite their collecting popularity, I was never really able to find much published information on the Dayton Racquet Company. So, years ago I began an ongoing Dayton research project, which has included interviewing former employees of the company and actually visiting the Dayton plant in the town where it was located in for its final 61 years of operation before closing.

1923 Dayton & 1990 Dayton

As I dug deeper over time, I was quite surprised as the Dayton Racquet Company story unfolded. Prior to doing my research, my long-held perception of Dayton had assumed that it was a highly mechanized organization that built racquets on the designs of some young innovative racquet designer. As you will read, I was wrong on both counts!

The Dayton Steel Racquet Company, as it was originally named, was founded as a subsidiary company of Talbott Industries in Dayton, Ohio where they began manufacturing their steel racquets with wire strings in 1923.

The Talbott clan, led by Harold E. Talbott, Sr. and his son Jr., was a prominent family, business-wise and socially in the history of Dayton. In 1915, they helped found the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company with Orville Wright, which by the end of WW I in late 1918 was turning out 38 biplanes a day for the war effort.

Their manufacturing experience in the airplane industry led the Talbott family to founding the Dayton Metal Products Company and a few years later, the Dayton Steel Racquet Company. As a side note, the Talbott-owned Dayton Metal Products Company was one of the three owners of the Dayton Triangles football team, which was a charter member of the National Football League. In fact, on October 3, 1920 in the very first NFL game ever played, the Triangles beat the Columbus Panhandles in Dayton 14-0. The Dayton coach was, naturally, a Talbott. Nelson “Bud” Talbott, a younger son who was an All-America running back at Yale in 1913, led the Triangles who now play under another name with which most of us are more familiar, the Indianapolis Colts.

The Dayton racquet’s basic design was based on the patents of tennis champion William A. Larned. Larned had won the U.S. intercollegiate Singles title while playing for Cornell in 1892 before riding with Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and then winning seven U.S. Singles titles between 1901 and 1911. He was inducted posthumously into the International Tennis HOF as a member of it’s second group of inductees in 1956. It is hardly the resume of someone who you would expect to break tennis tradition by designing the first commercially successful metal tennis racquet.

Wilson Indestructo & Dayton Badminton Racquet

Larned was awarded a patent for metal strings on July 18, 1922 and a second patent for his steel racquet design on April 17, 1923, which is the date displayed on all the early Dayton butt caps. Despite all of his successes in life, Larned committed suicide in 1926 just as the Dayton racquet was gaining in popularity. After his death, design changes were based on the patents of several men, including the future owner Richard Munday.

The Talbott family had hired Munday to manage the Dayton plant in the 1920s, which he did quite successfully. By 1931, Dayton offered five different models of tennis racquets, (Junior Pilot, Park Champion, Pilot, Holiday and Lone Eagle models) as well as squash and badminton racquets. They had also removed the word “Steel” from the company name by this time, as well as dropping a special order gut-strung option for all models of their racquet.

In 1934, Munday purchased the company from the Talbotts with financial help provided by local merchants in Arcanum, Ohio. He then moved the entire facility 30 miles up the road to Arcanum where he ran the plant with his brother, Louis. Their business continued to grow, due in a large part to the institutional market. Schools and clubs had found that the Dayton racquet held up well to heavy use and rarely broke a string, unlike the typical gut-strung racquet.

At the outbreak of World War II, Dayton suspended racquet manufacturing and retooled to make rifle bolts for the M-1 carbine. Dayton added a cafeteria to their plant and ran three shifts a day throughout the course of the war. As in the racquet industry, they were successful at war production as well, and in 1944, Dayton was awarded a citation from the War Department “For Outstanding Production of War Material.”

Square Steel Tubing Models

After the war ended, Louis Monday purchased the plant from his brother and returned to the business of making racquets. By 1958, they had added racquetball and paddle tennis racquets to their line and were producing four tennis racquet models, which were the Lone Eagle, Clipper, Flyer and Cadet.

Compared to most other tennis manufacturers, Dayton’s operation was quite small. In a 1966 interview, Louis stated that the plant had a crew of 17 employees and was producing “a hundred or so” total racquets per day. This equates to about 26,000 racquets produced annually.

Louis’ son, Ted, joined Dayton to manage the plant from 1972-78 and had “around 25 employees”. The most surprising fact that I learned from Ted was that the Dayton Racquet Company stayed in business until December 31, 1995! Having only two employees left when they closed, I’m sure they were probably only disposing of remaining inventory in their final years with actual production ceasing long before that.

Dayton Butt Cap Evolution

Contrary to my initial perception of Dayton being a highly mechanized manufacturer, it was really more of a “Mom and Pop” type operation. Much of the work, including all of the wire stringing, was done by hand and many of the employees were local housewives who could come and go during the daily 10-hour shifts, if they had errands to run.

The racquet frames were made by heating stainless steel tubing and bending it into a racquet shape. They were then reheated to 1600 degrees Fahrenheit and dipped in oil to harden the steel. Finally, the racquets were put into a draw furnace to enhance flexibility and then sand blasted and painted. The racquets that weren’t all-steel were fitted with handles of air-dried cedar, sycamore or basswood as the final step before stringing.

Dayton’s twisted wire strings were wound right at the plant and came in regular steel and copper-plated steel. The tennis racquets were strung using a 6-strand wound wire string, while all of the other racquets were strung with a 5-strand wire string. According to Louis Munday, the advantages of their strings were, “Our hollow-core steel strings rebound faster than gut, put more spin on the ball and aren’t affected by weather.”

Initially, in the 1920s, Dayton Racquets were distributed and sold through Spalding, Alex Taylor and Wright & Ditson outlets that often put their trademarks on the racquet along with the Dayton markings. My favorite Dayton racquet is the co-branded Wilson Indestructo model, which is an all-metal racquet with a cork wrapped handle that was manufactured from 1927-29 for exclusive sale by Wilson.

It was Dayton’s top of the line model with decorative flourishes that the everyday Dayton model didn’t have and sold for a then expensive price of $5.75. Unlike the other companies who marketed Dayton models by adding their company decal to the racquet, both Wilson’s and Dayton’s names are stamped into the metal butt cap of the Indestructo. By 1931, Dayton had established their own marketing channels and had abandoned co-branding their rackets with other companies altogether.

Since Dayton racquets were marketed over a 72-year span, and as recently as 1995, I think it is important to be able to date them. Over the years, I have devised three general rules of thumb for dating all Dayton racquets: 1) If the butt cap has “Dayton Ohio” printed on it, it was made between 1923 and 1934; 2) If the racquet has a logo of three stylized racquets on the throat, it was made after 1974; 3) If the plastic butt cap says “Arcanum O” and the throat doesn’t have the three-racquet logo, it dates from 1934-1974.

The old Dayton Racquet plant still sits empty on South Albright Street in Arcanum after manufacturing close to one million of their unique racquets over the years. In an industry that is constantly innovating, I’m sure William Larned would be very surprised to learn that his racquet designs stood the test of time for many decades after his death. It’s certainly a testament to the Munday family and the small town of Arcanum, Ohio, who kept his designs alive.

Good Collecting.

P.S. You can see a photo of the very rare Dayton squash racket on the home page of this website.