Magnavox
Magnavox (Latin for "great voice") is an American electronics company founded by Edwin Pridham and Peter L. Jensen. The brothers invented a moving-coil loudspeaker in 1915 at their lab in Napa, California, they named their brainchild "Magnavox". The company was formed in 1917 under the same name to market the invention.
Magnavox became a major consumer and defense electronics company. It manufactured radios, TVs, and record players (gramophones).
With the introduction of the Odyssey in 1972, Magnavox began the home video game console market. Philips acquired Magnavox's consumer electronics division in 1974. During the late 1970s the company released the Odyssey², also known as the Philips Videopac. In the late 1990s, some Philips electronics were marketed under the brand name "Philips Magnavox" in an attempt to increase brand awareness of the Philips name in the United States. While it did work to a degree, it also caused confusion to the consumer as to the difference between "Philips Magnavox" products and "Philips" products. Philips now once again markets the brands separately.
Teamed with Sony, Philips used the Magnavox brand name to introduce Compact Disc standard and equipment for consumer audio with the Magnavox player sold in department stores while the Sony CDP-101 went to high-end audio stores.
The defense group, centered around Fort Wayne, IN, remained independent under the Magnavox Electronic Systems name, first under Philips and later in the Carlyle Group, until it was acquired by Hughes Electronics in 1995.[1] The three areas of business of the MESC operation during the late 80s and early 90s were C-Cubed (Command, Control, and Communication), Electronic Warfare, and Sonobuoys. When Hughes Electronics sold its aerospace and defense operations to Raytheon, the former Magnavox defense operations were transferred as well.[citation needed] Shortly thereafter, Raytheon spun off the sonobuoy operation to form Under Sea Systems Inc, now Ultra-USSI in Columbia City, IN. The remainder of the operations now falls under Raytheon's Network Centric Systems in Fort Wayne, IN.
Among the defense products Magnavox manufactured the AN/ARC-164 UHF radio, AN/SSQ-53 series sonobuoys, AN/ALQ-128 EW equipment, AN/SSQ-62 series sonobuoys, and the Advanced Field Artillery Data System (AFATDS).[2]
The brand also has worked with Funai with their televisions after the Philips Magnavox name was popular.
The Magnavox name is still used by Philips to market "value-priced" (lower priced) consumer electronics.
In Australia, the rights to the Magnavox brand are not owned by Philips but by Mistral Ltd, a Hong Kong trading company that uses it to sell audio/video equipment of a different make. [1]
References
- ^ http://www.forecastinternational.com/Archive/dc/dc1879.htm]Magnavox Profile - Archived 3/1997