Sink or Swim

In 1966, the Pearsall Company was running fine without him. In a letter to Sam Burke he tendered his resignation as President of the Pearsall Company, effective 3/1/1966, with a request to remain Chairman of the Board until his stock was transferred and negotiated a selling price of $50,000. This money would help Statitrol's cash flow and give him more time for developing static devices. Letting go of Pearsall Company after eleven years wasn't as difficult as selling Statitrol.

Statitrol Corporation was founded in 1963. Duane Pearsall built the company from a few employees into a business that outgrew it's status of small. Statitrol was a success story and it flourished because of a venture capital loan of $250,000 in 1965. By 1977, Statitrol had 1000 employees when it merged with big business, Emerson Electric. After the merger, Duane would remain President for 18 months as a consultant to the new president.

Patents and patent pending, UL listing, Factory Mutual Approval.

Pearsall found that a Swiss company had also developed an ionization smoke detector, but it required too much power and too much radioactive material to be practical for use in homes. With the addition of a battery, Pearsall's detector became the first battery-powered home smoke detector listed by both Underwriter's Laboratory and Factory Mutual, and his company grew substantially as smoke detectors became a common fixture in homes everywhere. "It was a source of considerable satisfaction to learn about the many instances throughout the country in which our devices were credited with saving lives, sometimes of whole families," Pearsall noted.