Philco
Philco is an American electronics manufacturer headquartered in Philadelphia. Philco was a pioneer in battery, radio, and television production. In 1961, the company was purchased by Ford and, from 1966, renamed "Philco-Ford". Ford sold the company to GTE in 1974, and it was purchased by Philips in 1981, which became a subsidiary of the Dutch company Philips in 1987. In North America, the Philco brand is owned by Philips. In other markets, the Philco International brand is 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 entered the radio business. They followed other radio makers such as RCA, Atwater-Kent, Zenith Electronics, Freshman Masterpiece, FADA Radio, and AH Grebe into the battery-powered radio business. By the end of 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, and the Predicta series of television receiver sets of the 1950s.
Philo Farnsworth, credited for inventing the first fully functional all electronic television system, worked at Philco from 1931 to 1933.
Early history
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 floundered 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.Radios
Until the mid- to late-1920s, all radios except crystal sets were powered by vacuum tube batteries which were expensive, needed frequent charging, and leaked battery acid, reducing the wife approval factor in the home. A very successful August 1925 Philco consumer product, called the "Socket Power Battery Eliminator", was a rectifier unit which enabled users to operate radios from standard light sockets. By 1927 over a million of these units had been sold, but from that year the industry began manufacturing batteryless radios using RCA's AC tube. The almost immediate end of demand for battery eliminators forced Philco to quickly design and manufacture its own radios that used household power. The first Philco radios were introduced in mid-1928, and 96,000 were produced that year, making Philco radios 26th in the nation in production volume. Up to that time most radios were handmade and priced for relatively wealthy consumers. Atwater Kent, the leading radio seller, coincidentally was also located in Philadelphia.The Philadelphia Storage Battery Company decided that prices of radios could be scaled for a mass market by incorporating assembly line techniques then only used by the automobile industry. By the 1929 model year, Philco was in third place behind Atwater Kent and Majestic in radio sales. In 1930, the company sold 600,000 radios, grossed $34 million, and was the leading radio maker in the country. By 1934, they had captured 30% of the domestic radio market.
Philco radios were economical without sacrificing quality or durability. Like other makers of the era, they offered a wide line of radios beginning with five-tube sets all the way up to high-fidelity consoles with 20 tubes in 1937–38. Philco also made battery-powered radios which were by then called "farm radios", most of which had cabinets identical to their AC powered versions. The Philco "Baby Grand" was a shape that featured an arched top that wrapped from the sides over the top. This was for economic reason partly, as one piece of wood formed both the top and sides. Philco sold far more of this style than any other maker, a total of over two million from 1930 to 1938; many of them exist today in collections. By today's standards, most are still excellent performing AM band radios when restored.
A few of their innovations were very futuristic. From 1939 to 1941, they sold radios that were operated by wireless remote control, the one-tube "Mystery Control", used on their 13-tube model 116RX-SU. This feature was not offered by any other maker until the 1970s stereo receivers. Philco ranked 57th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts.
Another interesting product was the Philco "Beam of Light" 78 RPM record players offered in 1941 and 1942. These units had a tiny mirror attached to the player's needle. A beam of light was focused on the mirror which caused a vibrating light to hit a photoelectric cell and produce the audio signal. While this system had some advantages over the standard crystal phono cartridge of the time, it was unreliable and is today a very difficult unit to restore.
Expansion
In 1941, in response to outside needs for personnel skilled in electronics, Philco founded a training and installation organization that evolved into its TechRep division, with hundreds of personnel styled as Field Engineers or TechReps in positions worldwide. This division later became the foundation for the Ford Aerospace organization.Philco began marketing car radios in 1930 and later expanded into other areas including air conditioners, refrigerators, home freezers, consumer televisions, electric ranges, home laundry washers and dryers, and home entertainment products. Their first consumer television set, the 1948 table Model 48-1000, had a black-and-white screen and sold for US$395.
By 1954, Philco had led the radio industry in sales volume for 24 straight years, selling over 30 million radios.
Philco was also a pioneer in television broadcasting, launching Philadelphia experimental station W3XE in 1932. In 1941, the station became the third commercially licensed TV operation in the United States as WPTZ. It was sold to Westinghouse Broadcasting in 1953 and became KYW-TV, a CBS owned and operated station.
The Philco Predicta TV set was introduced in 1957 for the 1958 model year. It was a black-and-white television with the picture tube mounted in a unique steerable pod on a pedestal. There were many versions: 17" or 21" picture tubes, wood or metal cabinets and table or floor standing versions, some with rare UHF tuners. Its specially designed, high-deflection-angle picture tube turned out to be unreliable, and cost the company dearly in repairs and reputation. The 1959 model included a console and a table model. Many of them were sold to motels and bars due to the convenience of the swivel tube arrangement. It was discontinued in 1960; a disappointing failure for Philco. Due to the unique design, the Predicta is a collector's favorite and restored examples can easily be found.
Transistor research and product development
In late 1953, engineers at Philco Corporation invented the surface-barrier transistor, the first high frequency transistor suitable for use in high speed computers. Philco Corporation had produced a late 1950s production film about its surface-barrier transistor manufacturing processes and product developments that was titled, "Philco Transistors - The Tiny Giants Of The Future".A May 1954 news article describes Philco's development of a pre-production indium-coated transistor that used silicon instead of germanium that relied on further improvements in silicon refinement to bring to production.
In June 1955, the National Security Agency and the United States Navy entered into a contract with Philco to build a specialized scientific transistorized computer based on Philco's surface barrier transistor technology. The project was called SOLO, since the idea was to have powerful personal workstations, and the computer was later commercially named the Philco Transac S-1000. The SOLO transistorized large scale scientific computer was finally built and delivered to the National Security Agency in November 1957. Philco also entered into a contract with the U.S. Navy's David Taylor Basin Research Division in 1955, to build a larger scale fully transistorized computer using its surface-barrier transistor technology, which was named the CPXQ model and later became the Philco Transac S-2000.
Philco had developed and produced a miniature transistorized computer brain for the Navy's jet fighter planes in 1955 and it was called the "Transac", which had stood for "Transistor Automatic Computer." The Philco Transac computer brain had used its high-frequency surface-barriers transistors in the circuitry design.
Chrysler and Philco announced that they had developed and produced the world's first all-transistor car radio and it was announced in the April 28, 1955, edition of the Wall Street Journal. Chrysler made the all-transistor car radio, Mopar model 914HR, available in Fall 1955 for its new line of 1956 Chrysler and Imperial cars, as a $150 option. Philco's radio manufacturing plant in Sandusky, Ohio, had produced the all-transistor car radio unit for the Chrysler Corporation, which also used Philco's surface-barrier transistors in its circuitry design.
In 1955, Philco developed and produced the first all-transistor phonograph models TPA-1 and TPA-2. This was announced in the June 28, 1955, edition of the Wall Street Journal. Philco had begun selling these phonographs in the fall of 1955 for $59.95. The October 1955 issue of Radio & Television News magazine printed a full-page, detailed article, on Philco's new consumer phonograph. The Philco all-transistor portable phonograph TPA-1 and TPA-2 models played only 45rpm records and used four 1.5v "D" batteries for its power supply. "TPA" stands for "Transistor Phonograph Amplifier". Its circuitry used three Philco germanium PNP alloy-fused junction audio frequency transistors. After the 1956 season ended, Philco discontinued the all-transistor portable 45rpm phonograph models, for transistors were too expensive compared to vacuum tubes.
The Philco Transac models S-1000 scientific computer and S-2000 electronic data processing computer, were the first commercially produced large-scale all transistor computers, which were introduced in 1957. It used discrete surface barrier transistors instead of vacuum tubes. It also used a fast adder, invented by Bruce Gilchrist, James H. Pomerene and Y.K. Wong of the Institute for Advanced Study. It incorporated a speed-up technique for asynchronous adders reducing the time for additive carry-overs to propagate.
In 1959, Philco developed and produced the first battery-powered portable transistorized TV. This TV model was called the "Safari" and contained 21 transistors. Philco had developed the VHF micro-alloy diffused transistor and used them in the Safari portable TV. The retail selling price was $250.00 plus the cost of the rechargeable battery, which was $5.25 extra.
In 1962, the Philco 2000 Model 212 computer was chosen for use in the North American Aerospace Defense Command's famous Cheyenne Mountain Complex. Three of them were installed that year and ran until 1980. They were also used by research labs at Westinghouse Electric and General Electric.