NOMA (company)
NOMA was an American company best known for making Christmas lights. It was once the largest manufacturer of holiday lighting in the world, but since 1967 has existed only as a licensed trademark. It is now held by Inliten, LLC, of Glenview, Illinois.
NOMA was formed in 1925 as the National Outfit Manufacturer's Association, a trade group made up of 13–15 smaller manufacturers hoping to gain competitive advantage by combining their marketing and purchasing power. In 1926, the association’s members officially incorporated as the NOMA Electric Corporation and began selling NOMA-branded light sets.
NOMA introduced a number of innovations to holiday lighting, including:
the use of E17 intermediate base lamps for outdoor decorating (1928),
parallel-wired light sets for indoor use (1934),
all-rubber cords (1940),
Bubble Lites (1946), and
fused safety plugs (1951).
When the NOMA Electric Company was located in New York City, it may have produced the first commercial printed circuit board in 1946 with its Party Quiz Game. It was an electrical board game with replaceable question cards and two electrodes which, when placed in the proper positions to answer a question correctly, cause a bulb to light. Initially hard-wired, the game was made thinner by hot pressing aluminum foil onto cardboard, with the electrical contacts made into the board.