Saratoga Historical Foundation presents: The History of the Kaiser Permanente Quarry and Cement Plant by Ted Atlas, historian on zoom on April 23. The story begins in 1939 as Henry Kaiser begins to learn about making cement. Just as he knew nothing about making cement and no capability to do so, Henry Kaiser had to go to the library to learn ship building terms and no shipyard, In 1940 the Chemical Engineering Division of the Todd California Shipbuilding Corp., began construction on a magnesium plant adjacent to the Permanente Cement Plant. 2000 men worked around the clock to build the plant which operated until the end of the War. In 1948 Kaiser purchased an aluminum rolling plant, taken from Germany in war reparations, and installed it at Permanente. It was the only plant capable of making aluminum foil west of the Mississippi. Kaiser sponsored the television shows, Hawaiian Eye and Maverick to promote Kaiser Quilted aluminum foil, produced at the Permanente plant, into third in sales behind Reynolds and Alcoa.
Ted Atlas is a native of San Jose and 4th-generation Californian. He is retired from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department. Concurrent to his full-time career, he worked for 36 years in game day operations at San Francisco 49er games. This led him to write Candlestick Park, an illustrated history of the stadium. Go to
http://www.saratogahistory.com for zoom information and click on the blue link.
