AS ITS operations expanded Cunningham felt the need for a modern plant, one designed specifically for its requirements as a manufacturer of crossbars. It reconnoitered for a new location and found one in Honeoye Falls, fifteen miles to the south of Rochester. There, in 1961, on a twenty acre site that had formerly been devoted to nursery farming, the firm built its present factory.

There is something appropriate about this setting, an old upstate village surrounded by open farming country. The factory, for all its modernity, has a look of belonging. One is not surprised to see, across a meadow, from the entrance to the plant the stable in which the nursery company kept its horses. James Cunningham, visiting Honeoye Falls today, would find most of it recognizable.

Perhaps he would be temporarily bewildered by the complexity of the crossbar and the diversity of its applications. Cunningham crossbars are used by banks for closed-circuit television systems, by makers of automatic machine tools, transistors, printed circuits, and computers, by oil and power companies and aircraft manufacturers, by government and university laboratories, to direct processes undreamed of in his lifetime. They go to the launching sites at Cape Kennedy and to the space flight centers in Huntsville, Alabama, and Houston, Texas. (James Cunningham, returning on horseback from a successful selling tour was glad to use the moon simply for its light; he did not regard it as a target.)

But if he found the novelty of the modern enterprise bewildering, it would not be for long, for he would be quick to recognize the principles underlying it: respect for good workmanship, perseverance, insistence upon quality. These principles were his own. It would not surprise him to learn that they continue to sustain his descendants.