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Onondaga County industrial history

Cambridge Filter: Syracuse and Liverpool History

Research into the employers, products, places and years that Central New York families remember.

COMPANY HISTORY · PRODUCTS · PRIMARY SOURCES

Cambridge Filter at a glance

Federal testing records identify Cambridge as a Syracuse filter manufacturer. Later sources document a connection to Camfil, distinct filter materials, and a workers’ compensation proceeding. They do not establish a single factory address or exposure history for every worker.

1960Federal test report on an Aerosolve 3A-85 fiberglass filter
1963Cambridge joined in founding Camfil, according to Camfil
1977A separate patent described a Cambridge Absolute filter with glass-asbestos media
2000New York appellate opinion in an asbestosis-related compensation proceeding

The Syracuse manufacturing story

For decades, Central New York was known for making machinery, electrical equipment, steel, and automobile components. It also played a role in the development of high-efficiency air filtration. Cambridge Filter Manufacturing Corporation, identified in federal technical reports as a Syracuse manufacturer, supplied air filters tested by the National Bureau of Standards in the late 1950s and 1960s.

One unusually detailed surviving record is a January 1960 National Bureau of Standards report on Cambridge's Aerosolve 3A-85 cartridge. It describes a fiberglass blanket mounted in a pleated filter assembly, with cardboard framing, metal supports and a felt gasket. The report gives the model's construction and test performance; it does not identify the Syracuse street address where the cartridge was made.

Cambridge's history extended beyond Central New York. According to Camfil's corporate history, Cambridge Filter Corporation was a founding partner in the Swedish filtration company Camfil in 1963; the Larson family acquired Cambridge's ownership interest in 1983.

A later account of Cambridge's local history reports a move from Syracuse to a large Liverpool factory in 1962. That account describes a substantial manufacturing workforce, but the precise factory parcel and contemporary supporting records still need verification. Two address leads—7645 Seventh North Road and 7645 Henry Clay Boulevard—must not be treated as the same location without corroboration.

The surviving technical literature also reminds us that not all filters were made alike. The 1960 federal report describes fiberglass in the tested Aerosolve cartridge. A separate 1977 patent, written by another inventor, refers to a commercially available Cambridge Absolute filter using glass-asbestos media. The references concern distinct products and do not identify the workers or departments that handled particular materials.

A published 2000 New York appellate decision, Matter of Fonda v. Cambridge Filter Corporation, concerned a workers' compensation claim involving asbestosis and work-related exposure before 1972. The court reversed and remitted a Board decision; its published opinion did not determine which building, department or product was the exposure source.

Cambridge's story offers two lines of historical inquiry: how Central New York contributed to high-efficiency filtration technology, and how particular filtration products were made and used. Period photographs, city directories, property records, product bulletins and firsthand recollections could help recover the people and places behind that history.

Read the historical evidence

The records below concern different products, periods, and legal questions. They should not be treated as interchangeable proof of a particular person’s exposure.