American Science & Surplus

American Science & Surplus was established in about 1937. At that time the founder, Mr. Al Luebbers, was working for Western Electric, here in Chicago. Al had a great interest in optics and he noticed that a company next door to the plant where he worked was throwing away reject lenses. He asked them if he could buy the rejects and they said, "No. But you can have them if you will haul them away." Al and his wife Buddy took the lenses, cleaned and polished them at their kitchen table in the evenings and decided to offer them for sale. They placed an ad in Popular Science offering ten lenses for 50¢ and began to receive orders. Al figured that if they changed the ad to "Ten Lenses for $1" people would think they were better lenses and buy more. So he did. And they did. And the business was launched as American Lens & Photo. After the Second World War the company expanded, fed by war surplus. Eventually, Al opened a regular store on Chicago's Northwest side called American Science Center and started carrying educational science items. In the 1970's Al & Buddy's son Jerry joined his parents in the business, eventually taking it over from them. In 1979 he started a catalog operation under the name "Jerryco" and in 1981 he opened a second store, in Milwaukee. In 1988 Jerry took in a partner, Scott McCausland, who bought out the Luebbers after Jerry's unfortunate death a short time later. After consolidating all operations under the name American Science & Surplus we started our first web site in 1995. In late 1999 we completely rebuilt our web site and started taking on line orders. In 2000 McCausland retired and sold American Science & Surplus to Philip Cable. Philip, a life-long science geek, continues to grow the business today.