Beautiful certificate from the Poulsen Wirelesss Corporation issued in 1919. This historic document was printed by A. Carlisle & Company and has an ornate border around it. This item has the signatures of the Company's President, Beach Thompson and Secretary and is over 89 years old. San Francisco was the site of one of the first major wireless stations in the United States with the founding of the "Poulsen Wireless Corporation of Arizona" in 1910 and, later, the Federal Telegraph Company. Though called an Arizona company, it was founded here in San Francisco and transmitted from a site on 48th Avenue between Noriega and Ortega streets, at the Ocean Beach. Primary force behind the commercial development of Valdemar Poulsen's arc wireless transmission method was Cyril Frank Elwell (1884- 1963), who convinced the inventor to license his patents in the United States to him. Elwell was employed by San Francisco Investors to investigate all the existing wireless systems and in 1909 he came to the conclusion that the most promising system was the Poulsen. After ascertaining that the rights were for sale, he went to Denmark and had the system demonstrated to him between Lyngby and Copenhagen. He made a contract with the owners to purchase the patent rights for America, and on returning to America he organized the Poulsen Wireless Telephone & Telegraph Co. with a capital of $5,000,000. This company in 1911 was merged into another company known as the Poulsen Wireless Corporation. It was a large company, and to avoid taxation in different states it was reorganized and operated under the name of the Federal Telegraph Company.