It looks likely that, within a few months, Toledo will have another IPO - initial public offering - and this time it will be a high-tech company. Actually, there could be several in coming years as small companies bursting out of the incubation phase of development seek private stock offerings, which often are a prelude to a full-blown public stock offering.

No doubt, many Toledoans will react with amazement. IPOs are done on Wall Street, and the companies that go on the public market lately tend to be dot-com operations. They go public at the opening bell, and before noon they are selling for twice the offering price. Toledo is not the place where IPOs happen.

Not true.

Many dozens of companies, possibly hundreds, have begun their public stock offerings in Toledo. And even though many disappeared because of changing times - the Great Depression, bankruptcy, mergers, and takeovers - 21 remain, doing a total annual business of about $35 billion.

But Toledo has had some high-tech startups (never mind that what once was high tech is now pretty ordinary stuff).

For example, on Sept. 3, 1903, a group of Toledo businessmen signed the papers that created Owens Bottle Machine Co., a predecessor to today's Owens-Illinois, Inc. This was cutting-edge technology for the glass industry, and the daring investors wanted to promote the automatic bottle-blowing machine invented by Michael J. Owens.

By the end of the next year, the stock of Owens Bottle was public - at least in the eyes of the Toledo Stock Exchange.

Toledo Stock Exchange? Yes, indeed. In those adventurous days - three decades before the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was created - the local exchange traded shares in six area banks, 15 neighborhood savings and loans (with names like Broadway, Dime, Dollar, East Side, and Union), and 20 or so industrials, including Finlay Brewing, Gendron Wheel, Toledo Home Telephone, Milburn Wagon, Lenk Wine, and Toledo Gas Light & Coke.

In addition, the Toledo Stock Exchange dealt in 10 traction companies (mostly streetcar and electric-railway firms), and bonds of two dozen other companies, including area utilities and railroads.

When Owens Corning went public in 1952, it was considered at least "tech," if not high-tech. And why not? The uses of fiberglass seemed endless. Parent companies - Toledo's O-I and the Corning Glass Works, of Corning N.Y. - offered 630,000 shares at $35.75 a share. After the price quickly rose to $45 to $48 a share, The Blade reported that "not in a long time have brokers seen a hotter stock."

The rapid price rise drew a critical article from Business Week magazine, and an investigation by the National Association of Securities Dealers, which looked at some of the 133 brokerage firms that did the stock offering.

There have been other local "high-tech" stock offerings over the years, including the old Toledo Scale Co. (the first automatic computing scale), and DeVilbiss Co. (an early leader in spray-painting technology).

Some among the local companies are unique. O-I is because it went public twice. The second time, in 1991, after a late-1980s takeover, O-I sold 60 million shares at $11 a share.

Dana Corp. is unique because its IPO took place before it moved here: When the firm was known as Spicer Manufacturing Corp., based in New Jersey, it sold $5 million worth of stock in 1916, at $47 a share. Spicer moved to Toledo in 1928-29 and by 1933 its stock was rated "very speculative" by Standard & Poor's. Many a stockholder got wealthy from that company, which was renamed Dana Corp. in 1946.

Some local IPOs hit the crest of a wave - such as Hickory Farms of Ohio, which went public in 1971 at $10 a share. It rose to $17 by the end of the first day and to more than $20 within a couple of days.

Toledo has had its share of IPOs in the last 150 years - going back to the early days of railroad lines that started in the region. We've had 'em all - auto manufacturers, auto-parts makers, breweries, retail store chains, spice and coffee makers, and dozens of banks that are no longer around.

Until the late 1970s, Toledo had two brokerages with seats on the New York Stock Exchange (Bell & Beckwith and Foster Bros., Weber & Co.), and many a local company went public through them. Bell & Beckwith folded in 1983 because of a $47 million fraud. The Bell & Beckwith bankruptcy killed off another local IPO, Liberty Airlines, which was in the middle of a stock offering.

In the 1990s, Toledo had eight IPOs, and two other companies went on the Nasdaq Stock Market that were traded only locally before.

There's nothing new about Toledo IPOs, nothing new about "tech" IPOs. But what is new about the next wave of IPOs is that they may represent "high-tech" in the 21st century style.

Homer Brickey is The Blade's senior business writer.

First Published March 28, 2000, 5:00 a.m.