Philco

Philco (PHIL = Philadelphia and CO = Company) 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, it began making batteries for electric vehicles in 1906. It 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 radios were powered by vacuum tube batteries, which were expensive, needed frequent charging, and leaked battery acid, reducing the wife acceptance factor in the home. A very successful August 1925 Philco consumer product, called the "Socket Power Battery Eliminator", was a rectifier unit that enabled users to operate radios from standard lightbulb 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 26th in the nation in radio production volume. Up to that time most radios were handmade and priced for relatively wealthy consumers. Erstwhile competitor Atwater Kent, the leading radio seller, was also located in Philadelphia.

The Philadelphia Storage Battery Company decided that radio production costs could be reduced by incorporating assembly line techniques then only used by the automobile industry, and began producing less expensive mass-market radios. By the 1929 model year, Philco was in third place behind Atwater Kent and Majestic (Grigsby-Grunow Corp) 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, it 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 1937–1938. Philco also made battery-powered radios, then known as "farm radios", most of which had cabinets identical to their AC powered versions. The Philco "Baby Grand" (today called "cathedral" radios by collectors) featured an arched 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 (in over twenty models, with from four to eleven tubes) from 1930 to 1938; many 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, Philco sold radios that were operated by wireless remote control, the one-tube "Mystery Control", used on their 13-tube model 116RX-SU (or 39-116). 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 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 very difficult to restore.

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"[1].

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" (C-1000, C-1100), which had stood for "Transistor Automatic Computer." The Philco Transac computer brain had used its high-frequency surface-barriers transistors in the circuitry design.