Eumig

EUMIG was an Austrian company producing audio and video equipment that existed from 1919 until 1982. The name is an acronym for Elektrizitäts und Metallwaren Industrie Gesellschaft, or, translated, the "Electricity and Metalware Industry Company."

EUMIG was founded in 1919 in Vienna, Austria, by Karl Vockenhuber, the engineer Alois Handler and Adolf Halpern, who furnished the bulk of the firm's initial financial resources. At its founding, the company produced lighters and cigarette cases and miscellaneous electrical materials. First located at 86 Wienzeile in Mariahilf, the 6th district of Vienna, in the same year EUMIG moved to 42 Schallergasse in the 12th district.

In 1921, the company, now with 65 employees, moved again, to 5 Hirschgasse, back in the Mariahilf. In 1924, EUMIG began manufacturing two models of radios, the "Low Loss Detektor Empfänger" ("Low Loss detector receiver") and a smaller model, the "Eumig Baby." In 1926 Vockenhuber and Handler bought out Halpern, who retired from the company. EUMIG continued production of radio receivers and sound recorders from 1924 until 1962.

In 1928, Eumig began producing film equipment, and three years later, in 1931 it introduced its first film projector, the "Eumig P 1." In 1932, the first movie camera "Eumig C 1" for 9.5-mm film was introduced, and a second model, the "Eumig C 2," also for 9.5-mm film, was introduced in 1935. This was the first movie camera in the world with semi-automatic tracking exposure control. Still expanding, that same year, EUMIG acquired the company Panradio, located at 11-13 Buchengasse, in the 10th district. In 1937 it introduced the movie cameras "Eumig C 3" (propelled by a spring mechanism), and the "Eumig C 4," which was the first amateur film camera in the world driven by electric motor. Overall, about 300,000 units of the C-3-series were built.

During this period, EUMIG benefitted from its employment of some of the best-known European industrial designers, including Walter Maria Kersting. It became the manufacturer of several models of the well-known Volksempfänger or "People's Radio," that the Nazis used to reach and control a huge audience throughout Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.

By 1941 EUMIG had grown to 1,000 employees, and during the war year, in addition to radios and cameras EUMIG also produced military equipment. Its factory on the Buchengasse in Vienna was destroyed in 1945 by bombing, but machinery had been moved the previous year to a branch in Micheldorf.

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