Winding capacitors at the Atwater Kent factory

 An interesting picture from roughly 1925 on the wonderful Shorpy site:

source: https://www.shorpy.com/node/4785

It appears that they used paper and aluminum foil wound together to form the capacitor. And all those machines and women crammed into that triangular room, imagine the noise.

Atwater Kent (the man and his company) was profiled in the July 1969 issue of Popular Electronics, page 33:

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Poptronics/60s/69/Pop-1969-07.pdf

As I read it Atwater Kent didn't want to bargain collectively with his workers so he shut the works and retired wealthy to California.

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm