EGL Company Building

EGL Company Building

The EGL Company

Ralph F. Cortese began making electrode equipment in his basement in 1927, and three years later founded Engineering Glass Laboratories in a 1000 sq. ft. building in Newark, New Jersey. He soon added aspirators, pirani gauges, mercury traps, graded seals, and other laboratory glassware to his product line and, with the help of his five children, the business grew rapidly.

EGL continued to develop new products, and purchased 12 neon related companies in the New York, New Jersey area – the core of the neon industry.

By 1975 EGL had become the world’s largest manufacturer of neon products, with more than 50 percent of all neon signage worldwide containing EGL neon electrodes, tubing, gases, tube supports, or other components.

The company’s line of processing equipment also expanded to include crossfires, torches, ribbon burners, bombarder transformers, chokes, diffusion pumps, vacuum pumps, and a wide variety of other equipment – virtually everything needed to build a complete neon plant. In addition, EGL developed a comprehensive line of cold cathode lamp blanks and housings, as well as high-output fluorescent lamps.

Today, EGL is still owned and operated by the Cortese family, now in its fourth generation.

Over 12,000 sign shops and corporate managers in 75 countries now specify EGL products and equipment for their signage and architectural lighting.

To meet this demand, EGL operates an 80,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility with highly-specialized, state-of-the-art equipment, raising quality to new heights and increasing production capacity, while continuing to develop the world’s most comprehensive, most advanced line of lighting products.