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Please send any factual corrections, dead links, information and/or links that you feel that should be on this page to the page maintainer but please note that I do not have an Internet access at the moment so there may be some time before I can answer.
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QUAD See --> Acoustical Manufacturing Co.
Quadraflex See --> G & S: Speakers
Quantegy Inc. The company was formed in 1995 when investors that took over the Ampex Recording Media Corporation division of Ampex. They make mostly specialised blank tapes and disks for the pro-audio and for the scientific/engineering community but also a range of consumer tapes. By 2004 the company was down to 250 employees. Quantegy shut down its operations on December 31, 2004 and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 4 the year after.
Rabco Co. Company formed in 1968 by Jacob Rabinow to manufacture a linear tracking arm that he invented, there were problems with the arm and it's manufacturea from the start and Mr. Rabinow more or less gave up on the idea and sold his company to Harman Kardon in 1972, they continued selling the arm and even turntables using this brand for a few years afterward but discontinued its use in 1980 when HK was taken over by Shin Shirasuna.
Radiofabrik Ingelen Figer & Co KG See --> Ingelen
Radiola See --> Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd. (AWA) (Australia) or RCA (USA)
Radionette See --> Tandberg
Radiotechnic Laboratories See --> Pierce Wire Recorder Corp.
Radiowerk Dzierzoniow See --> Diora Świdnica
Radiowerk Horny A.G. Founded in 1936 in Wien when the Austrian arm of Philips took over the bankrupt Vindobona company. This turned out to be a smart move on Philips part as they were the main creditor and supplier of the original company and would thus have lost out if the company had not survived, further more the Hornyphon brand had become well known in Germany and Britain in addition to being by far the biggest supplier of radios etc. in Austria, and despite the financial problems Vindobona had suffered the RH company became profitable soon after production was restarted. From its founding and until 1947 the company was mostly occupied with the manufacture of its own products but after that period Philips increasingly began to integrate the sales and branding of the various companies they owned world-wide and Philips products began to appear in Austria branded Hornyphon and products from RH were increasingly sold outside of its home country branded as Philips, by the 1960's the Hornyphon name had all but disappeared except as a local brand. The factories continued however and were for a time the main source of certain tape recorders lines from Philips, their excellent but seldom seen professional tape recorders were for instance designed and manufactured at the RH factory and later some video recorder lines were produced there as well. The usage of the Hornyphon trademark appears to have been dropped in the 1980's and I have not been able to find out for certain if the factory is still going but I believe it was one of the factories that disappeared in the "Rationalisation Programme" of Philips in the early 1990's, when the company sold and shut down a large number of product lines, technologies and factories in an effort to simplify its management and financial structure (remember "downsizing" was the business buzzword of the late 80's, early 90's). Despite what you might think the Horny and Hornyphon names did not have any negative or "entertaining" connotations in English at the time when the company's products were at their most popular as an export product (1930's), the company's main export markets were actually the English speaking world, in particular portable gramophones and radios from the company were popular with the English expatriates that were working in various corners of the British empire since they used more standardised parts, were more easily repairable and had a wider tuning range than the equivalent British product not the least due to the use of better passive parts that withstood extremeties in humidity better. It appears that slang usage of the word "horny" was limited to the former colonies in America until the 1970's.
Radmor Founded in 1947 in Danzig, Poland as a radio workshop, operated throughout the communist years as a radio and communications equipment manufacturer under the name of Zaklady Radiowe Radmor and had a line of hi-fi separates that were sold locally under the Unitra brand and after the privatisation in the early 90's under their own name. Exited the audio business in the 90's to concentrate on manufacturing communications equipment, changed their name to Radmor S. A., and is one of the success stories of the new Polish economy. -- Official homepage.
Radon Industrial Electronics (RIE) Small manufacturer based in Worthing, Sussex, England around 1970, despite the name the company made mostly home hi-fi products and loudspeakers are the only products with this name that I have seen on the second hand market.
the Rank Organisation A highly diversified UK based company that was originally started in the 1920’s by J. Arthur Rank as a religious film production company, later incorporated in 1933 as the British National Films Company, but started buying up film distributor, cinemas and studios later in the 30’s when he had problems getting his movies distributed due to aversion by the rest of the industry to the propagandistic nature of his films. Had by the 1960's taken over a number of audio companies including English operations such as Wharfedale Wireless Works and Leak in addition to a number of overseas operations including Heco in Fermany, they had also entered the business sector with companies such as Rank Xerox. It is traditional to speak of Rank Org. companies like Wharfedale as nominally independent subsidiaries of Rank and you will usually see company histories treat the "Rank years" as just another period in their history, in reality things were a bit more complex with a number of products appearing under multiple brands and a number of companies being folded into other operations. The company originally took over the Wharfedale operation in 1958 and continued to grow that brand and distribution network, in 1974 most of Ranks loudspeaker production was moved to a new factory in Wharfedale's home town of Bradford and some older production facilities where closed at the same time, the company had by then become one of the largest loudspeaker manufacturer in the world, in 1977 they produced more than one million speakers and had pioneered technologies such as laser interferometry and the use of polymers in drivers alongside metal and ceramic domes in tweeters. The company entered the professional loudspeaker market in the early 80's and were very successful in particularly in the domestic market with models such as the Wharfedale Diamond that were the best-selling loudspeakers of the 1980's, period. Rank divested of all of their audio brands during the 80's most of them ending up with Wharfedale Loudspeakers PLC which was put out and listed on the LSE in 1988 as a separate company, but Wharfedale PLC got in addition the right for its own brand and related names that had been created during the ownership of Rank some such as Airdale, the rights to a number of classic English hi-fi brands including Leak The company is still around but is by now almost exclusively occupied in the entertainment sector, operating casinos, bingo halls and remote gaming & betting sites, which is something that would probably not bemuse puritan founder J. Arthur Rank. -- Official homepage.
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