R. L. Polk

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Ralph Lane Polk (1849-1923) was an American compiler of facts and publisher of directories.

Born in Bellefontaine, Ohio, Polk was educated at the Pennington seminary, New Jersey. He became a successful Detroit publisher and president of R. L. Polk and Company.^[1] His son, Ralph Lane Polk Jr. (born 1911), was a later president of the company,^[2] which still exists in 2008. R. L. Polk city directories are valuable tools for researchers.

Currently, the company is run by Stephen Polk - Great-Grandson of R.L., and has moved the company far beyond the city pages. Among other ventures, Polk uses state and government sources to obtain vehicle registrations and compiles reports of them for their clients in the automotive industry, the news media, and various advertising agencies - as well as government agencies. The SQL based program used is called "PolkInsight" and is frequently used to determine who is ahead in vehicle registrations - therefore determining who is currently in the lead. Many automobile commercials on television show in small print on the bottom of the screen "Information supplied by R.L. Polk and Co." In addition to PolkInsight, the company also has a program called TIPNet, which compiles data on heavy-duty commercial vehicles.

R.L. Polk and Co. is expanding world wide, with offices including - but not limited to - St. Albans, Paris, Essen, Madrid, Melbourne, Tokyo and Beijing.

[edit] Polk in Literature

In the book "Silence of the lambs", FBI agent Jack Crawford instructs trainee Clarice Starling to use Polk in order to find the vehicle registration during a training exercise.