Philco-Ford
US branding
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| pioneering electronics company, contemporary electronics brand |
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| Industry | Electronics manufacturing |
| Founded | 1892 in Philadelphia, |
| Headquarters |
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States |
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Area served
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international |
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Key people
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Philo Farnsworth |
| Products | consumer electronics |
| Parent |
Philips (North America), AB Electrolux (elsewhere) |
| Website | Philco International |
Philco, (founded as Helios Electric Company, renamed Philadelphia Storage Battery Company), was a pioneer in battery, radio, and television production. In North America, it is the Philco brand owned by Philips. In other markets, it is the Philco International brand owned by Electrolux.
In the early 1920s, Philco made storage batteries, "socket power" battery eliminator units, and battery chargers. With the invention of the rectifier tube, which made it practical to power radios by electrical outlets, in 1928, Philco decided to get into the booming radio business. They followed other radio makers such as Atwater-Kent, Zenith Electronics, RCA, Freshman Masterpiece, FADA Radio, and AH Grebe into the battery-powered radio business. By 1930, they were selling more radios than any other maker, a position they held for more than 20 years.
Philco built many iconic radios and television sets, including the classic cathedral-shaped wooden radio of the 1930s (aka the "Baby Grand"), and the Predicta series of television receiver sets of the 1950s.
Philo Farnsworth, who invented cathode ray tube television, worked at Philco for some time.
Philco was founded in 1892 as Helios Electric Company. From its inception until 1904, the company manufactured carbon-arc lamps. As this line of business slowly foundered over the last decade of the 19th century, the firm experienced increasingly difficult times. As the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company, in 1906 it began making batteries for electric vehicles. They later supplied home charging batteries to the infant radio industry. The Philco brand name appeared in 1919. From 1920 to 1927, all radios were powered by storage batteries which were fairly expensive and often messy in the home.
A very successful August 1925 product, called the "Socket Power Battery Eliminator", was a rectifier unit that allowed users to operate their battery-powered radios from standard light or wall sockets. By 1927 over a million of these units had been sold. However, the invention of the vacuum tube rectifier (incorporated into the coming 1928 line of radio sets) made this technology obsolete.
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Wikipedia