Thomas Edison.
National Union was a company founded in 1867 by the North American inventor Thomas Edison to manufacture and market his improved version of the telegraph. Edison was able to secure a contract to run a telegraph line connecting the North American capital of Burgoyne to Mexico City, the capital of the United States of Mexico. Edison managed to complete the telegraph line in 1876.
As Edison produced more inventions, he created subsidiary companies under National Union to manufacture and market them. National Electric was created in the late 1870s to produce his newly-invented light bulb, and North American Communications was established in 1890 to produce the telephone. By the first decade of the twentieth century, National Union and its various subsidiaries were the dominant force in electric motors and lighting equipment.
Edison's invention of vitavision in 1900 led to the building of the first vitavision transmitting unit in Toms River, New Jersey two years later. However, the enormous cost of vitavision receiver sets, which went for N.A. £2,000 at the time, meant that vitavision was a commercial failure. Not until the 1920s would a combination of cheaper receiver sets and the sudden popularity of Owen Galloway's Galloway Playhouse programme bring about the success of vitavision.
Edison's death in 1903 shortly after (and possibly as a result of) the invention of the airmobile removed much of the driving force behind National Union. Rather than develop the airmobile in-house, Edison's successors at National Union licensed the airmobile patents to a former carriage maker named Whitney Forster, who had organized Forster Airmobile, Ltd. in 1904 with the financial assistance of the National Financial Administration.
National Union does not have an entry in Sobel's index.
In For All Nails, National Union's vitavision subsidiary is called the National Union Broadcasting System.