Otis B. Moorhead was born January 9, 1893 in San Francisco. He experimented very early with wireless and was inspector for Marconi Wireless in 1914, working also with Major Allen Forbes. In 1915 Moorhead worked evenings in the DeForest booth at the Panama-Pacific Exposition, selling audions. He decided to manufacture tubes and got some money from Forbes and Kendrick. An office was set up on the 4th floor on 650 Mission Street in San Francisco with a P.O. Box for an address. In early 1915 Moorhead and E.T. Cunningham collabortated on the first desgn of a gas detector tube, but then went separate ways. Cunningham advertised his Audiotron October 1915 and Moorhead had his first ad in July 1916 with the words "The former manufacturers of the Audiotron are now manufacturing a new and better Tube.".

The tubular Electron Relay (ER) was produced in 1915 by the help of Ralph Hyde, a former G.E. lamp factory superintendent and before expert glass blower at Oakland Mazda Lamp works. There were only a few tubes made of this type and the details of construction are not known. Early 1916 DeForest brought suit, but since the validity of the DeForst Audion patent was being challenged in the courts by Marconi, an injunction was not granted but a bond was required as a condition of continued production until such time as the Audion patent dispute was settled. After posting the required indemnity bond, Moorhead did publish ads for the second Electron Relay - with the first picture in "The Electrical Experimenter" of August 1916 (Tyne names July for a first ad). Moorhead used as name "Pacific Laboratories Sales Department, 534 Pacific Building, San Francisco.

Tyne page 170: "In February 1917 the Pacific Research Laboratories were taken over by the Moorhead Laboratiories, Inc., although advertisements for the Moorhead tubes continued to be signed by the Pacific Laboratories Sales Dept."