Howard Layton, Businessman

When Howard Layton founded Interlab Incorporated, he did not have manufacturing activities in mind at all. Where would he get the money? And with only a 20ft by 20 ft office to work in, where would any manufacturing be done? No, that was not in his agenda. Instead, he hung out his shingle as a manufacturer’s representative and proceeded to look for firms who made the kinds of products that he felt qualified to sell. However, when he began to offer his wares to IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York, he encountered opportunities that changed his mind. IBM was not happy with the available products of the day. They needed vendors who could be taught to understand and manufacture products according to IBM’s own operating specifications and Howard was only too willing to learn.

With those specifications, he designed new products and sub-contracted their manufacture to others. By this means his business with IBM grew, and eventually a scientist at the IBM Research Laboratories at Yorktown Heights invited him to equip an entirely new lab with equipment of his design, dismissing Howard’s excuse that he did not have a factory in which to build the stuff, by offering to let him put it together right there in the laboratory itself.

"Howard, all you have to do, is sub-contract all the bits and pieces, then gather them all together in a U-Haul van, then bring them into the lab and build the equipment right here!"

From that unconventional beginning, Howard and his wife Nárcissza developed a bona fide manufacturing business, first in the huge basement of a house they bought expressly for that purpose, and then moving to larger and larger factories as the enterprise flourished.

"The Thirteen Club" tells the whole story.