ITT Corporation

[crackle]

On the Wikipedia page for ITT Corporation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITT_Inc. there is a paragraph claiming that ITT bought Kolster Brandes because KB had run into difficulties with its manufacture of colour televisions.
see quote below:
"In the late 1960s, the British electronics manufacturer Kolster-Brandes, KB for short, had run into trouble with its color television manufacturing, and turned to ITT for help; ITT bought out the company, and for a while, UK products were badged "ITT KB" then eventually just ITT. By the late 1970s, ITT had a good presence on the UK domestic electrical market in television, audio and portable radio products."

My understanding was that ITT owned STC, and from 1938 STC already owned KB, so ITT already effectively owned KB.

My late father (who worked for STC) believed that the slow name transformation from KB to ITT-KB and finally to ITT over several years, from about 1968 to 1972, was because the change of name to ITT was planned, but done in stages because the name ITT at that time was still associated heavily with German products and it was felt that in 1968 there was still a little anti German sentiments around. The Kolster Brandes name was by then very well known and appeared to all intents and purposes to be a British company.

When did STC change its name to ITT?

Your comments and any insider knowledge would be most welcome.

Thanks
Mike

[G6Tanuki]

Have a look here:

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Intern...ph_Corporation

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Standa...nes_and_Cables

https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Kolster-Brandes

and http://kbmuseum.org.uk/itt_radios.htm

ITT on radios is something I always associate with 1970s portables: a relative had an ITT "Colt" battery/mains radio around that timescale.

STC was only really used as a brand on their professional stuff: the 1950s-era R4187 aircraft HF receiver I had was branded STC.

[turretslug]

Intriguing that it was felt that a German association would meet with customer resistance- surely, Grundig had not only achieved a good reputation but also good sales penetration in the UK, along with other technology companies whose brand was more obviously Germanic than a US-based company like ITT. In that curious way that head and heart can be somewhat divorced, some of the most vocally anti-German folk I know also own German cars. Go figure....

A former colleague who worked at ITT for some years and took an interest in the company background told me of a notorious WW2 episode, worthy of a chapter in Catch 22, whereby bombers leased to the US Government by the US arm of ITT Corporation were used to attack ball-bearing plants owned by the German arm of ITT. Both parties incurred substantial losses, but both were handsomely compensated by the US taxpayer post-war. I had been aware that civil airliners tended to be owned by companies with substantial capital and leased to airlines, but hadn't realised that the same could effectively apply to military aircraft. Like lawyers, capitalism always comes out smiling!

[dazzlevision]

In 1925, ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, USA) bought the overseas operations of Western Electric from its owner: American Telephone & Telegraph Corporation (AT&T), in the early 1920s.

ITT then proceeded to rename these non-USA Western Electric companies, invariably including the word "Standard" in their new names. In the UK, Western Electric became Standard Telephones and Cables (STC).

From some time in the late1920s/early 1930s, Kolster-Brandes was controlled by ITT USA (there's a convoluted history of the Kolster and Brandes companies and their eventual merger to form K-B). In 1938, ITT transferred Kolster Brandes Ltd (the UK operation) to STC.

In 1962, STC acquired the operations of RGD, Regentone, ACE and Argosy, from Lloyd's Packing Warehouses Ltd and merged it with KB. From then on, the operation was known as "The Consumer Electronics Division of STC Ltd". The service division was called Combined Radio & Television Services Ltd (part of the former Lloyd's operations), which relocated from Romford to Footscray.

There was a trend in the 1960s and beyond for "the name behind the name" to be made more obvious in publicity material and documentation, to demonstrate the "global" nature of their operations. So, that is why the KB brand became ITT-KB and then just ITT. The same thing happened in Germany, where ITT's German consumer electronics operation, Schaub Lorenz (a division of ITT's main German company, Standard Electric Lorenz - SEL), became ITT-Schaub Lorenz and then just ITT.

In STC's main business - telecommunications, their publicity material and technical publications adopted the same corporate font/typeface as ITT and also stated "An associate of ITT".

At the same time the ITT-KB branding was introduced in the UK, the UK consumer electronics operation was rebranded ITT Consumer Products (UK) Ltd.

At the same time, like car companies did a bit later on, design and production of radios and TVs was internationalised by ITT, to avoid their national (local) companies duplicating effort, thereby achieving economies of scale. That is why, after the CVC1 and CVC2 chassis, which were UK designed and made, the CVC5 and subsequent chassis were based on German SEL designs, but made locally (for a while!).

In the early 1980s, ITT began to divest its overseas operations and this led to STC becoming an independent company, with a stock market flotation. The mainland Europe operations of ITT were sold to Alcatel of France (primarily a telecommunications company). Alcatel did not want the consumer electronics operations and sold it to Nokia of Finland and the rebranding from ITT to ITT Nokia, and then just Nokia took place (history repeating itself!). Sadly, an independent STC did not survive for long and it was taken over by Northern Telecom (Nortel) of Canada, which itself went bust later on!

[Richard_FM]

I don't remember seeing many ITT branded products on sale in the UK, the parents of one of my friends at school had a TV made by them in the mid 1980s.

IIRC another WW2 connection was Lorenz made the radio guidance system used for the bombing of Coventry, & soon copied by the allies.

[crackle]

Originally Posted by turretslug

Intriguing that it was felt that a German association would meet with customer resistance- surely, Grundig had not only achieved a good reputation but also good sales penetration in the UK, along with other technology companies whose brand was more obviously Germanic than a US-based company like ITT.

I am not so sure that German electronics had made a substantial penetration into the UK market in the 60's. They may have been around but our own electronics industries were probably only just getting back on their feet.
My fathers comments may have only been his own views or those of his colleagues at STC rather than official views of KB/STC/ITT.

I tend to feel that Dazzelvision's comments about "the name behind the name" to be made more obvious in publicity material far more believable than the explanation given in Wikipedia for the change in KB to ITT branding. To say that they had to rush to the rescue of KB, seems to be very American orientated.
KB had quite a following in their customer base, they played the patriotic card well and made great play on "made in Britain by British workers".

Thanks for the comments so far, and Dazzelvision has certainly opened my eyes to a few new interesting points.

The reason for setting out the design of my website for the KB and the ITT-KB pages was that very reason, to show the points at which the designs changed and to graphically illustrate the transformation from KB to ITT-KB to simply ITT.

As mentioned a similar approach was used in Germany with the phasing out of the Schaub-Lorenz name to just ITT.

Keep the comments coming.

Mike

[Nuvistor]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

I don't remember seeing many ITT branded products on sale in the UK, the parents of one of my friends at school had a TV made by them in the mid 1980s.

A nice brochure from Chris’s web site Radio-Tv, early middle 70’s, we sold a lot of them, decent sets.
https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/itt/

[crackle]

And a few more catalogues here, http://www.kbmuseum.org.uk/catalogues.htm these ones show the radios and other audio equipment, not just the TV's.
Note; right click and "view" the images to see larger.
Mike

[electronicskip]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

I don't remember seeing many ITT branded products on sale in the UK, the parents of one of my friends at school had a TV made by them in the mid 1980s.

We certainly used to shift a lot of ITT branded high end video recorders in the 80s at Rumbelows , in fact if I recall they were always in short supply despite the price tag.

I still have a branded ITT Camera somewhere 110 format I think.

[Brigham]

Weren't some V2000 video recorders 'Lorenz'? It seems to ring a bell.

[dazzlevision]

To my knowledge, ITT's German brands were ITT, Schaub Lorenz, Graetz and Ingelen.

There might be others of course.

In France, ITT owned Oceanic.

[SiriusHardware]

The thing I remember most about ITT is the advert advertising their 'ideal colour button' (And featuring, for some reason, a native American) on their range of CTVs.

Since I never got to work on one I was forever left to wonder how any such feature might know what my ideal choice of colour setting would be.

[G6Tanuki]

ITT also owned Salora; Salora made most of the '' Finlandia '' TVs for Granada TV-rental.

[Nuvistor]

Originally Posted by SiriusHardware

The thing I remember most about ITT is the advert advertising their 'ideal colour button' (And featuring, for some reason, a native American) on their range of CTVs.

Since I never got to work on one I was forever left to wonder how any such feature might know what my ideal choice of colour setting would be.

I can’t remember how it worked, fixed components in the design or some preset controls inside the set but I don’t think my customers used it much. The sets had a really good picture and were reliable, we found them much better that the RBM and Pye ranges we also sold from around the middle 70’s.

[dazzlevision]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

ITT also owned Salora; Salora made most of the '' Finlandia '' TVs for Granada TV-rental.

Are you sure about ITT owning Salora of Finland? My researches indicate Salora was acquired by the Lohja Corporation of Finland (possibly in the 1970s) and later bought by Nokia (also Finnish) in 1984. This was after Nokia and Salora set up a joint venture, Nokia Mobira, to make radiotelephones. That company went on to be market leader in cellphones (but was later sold to Microsoft by its parent, Nokia).

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

ITT also owned Salora; Salora made most of the '' Finlandia '' TVs for Granada TV-rental.

This would probably have been after the sale of ITT to Nokia. Nokia took over Salora, both their mobile phone joint venture and their consumer electronics business. It was never fully integrated before going bankrupt. I'm not sure whether full integration of design and production was done by Semitech or even later when Otrum took over. In the end, all remaining activities were centered around the former Finlux.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by dazzlevision

Are you sure about ITT owning Salora of Finland? My researches indicate Salora was acquired by the Lohja Corporation of Finland (possibly in the 1970s) and later bought by Nokia (also Finnish) in 1984. This was after Nokia and Salora set up a joint venture, Nokia Mobira, to make radiotelephones. That company went on to be market leader in cellphones (but was later sold to Microsoft by its parent, Nokia).

Are you sure Lohja (Finlux) already owned Salora by the time Nokia took over? It could be, but looking at their sets they were of completely different designs. This wouldn't rule out financial ownership of course, but integration of design and production only seems to have started some time after Nokia took over - very gradually at that with at least SEL, Finlux and Salora having very different chassis designs (fastest way to tell the difference were probably the position numbers of the parts but some chassis designs were very recognisable by just looking at them for 5 seconds - Salora M / Nokia Eurodigi comes to mind). I think by the time the whole thing went bankrupt and Semitech OY was formed they might or might not have fully finished integrating.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by Brigham

Weren't some V2000 video recorders 'Lorenz'? It seems to ring a bell.

They were. When the writing was on the wall regarding V2000, ITT abandoned the system and started selling VHS machines. First JVC models, later on Sanyo became their default supplier. They might have used other manufacturers from time to time. The most interesting VHS machines were actually made for a very short time by SEL themselves in the mid 1980's. I remember them using a Japanese deck but German electronics. Even featuring two Z80 microcontrollers I think. Very strange design.

[usradcoll1]

Was that V2000 format the one that used a smaller cartridge that had the reels on top of the other?
There was a unit sold in the US that used that design. It was a format that was sold by the Quasar division of Matsushita after they bought the TV business from Motorola. They were out, only for a short time.
They referred to it as " The Great Time Machine". I never saw one.

[Radio Wrangler]

I believe ITT owned a semiconductor operation "Intermetall" in Germany that made complex system ICs for TVs.

In about 1991 I bought a high-end Panasonic TV. On taking a shufti inside when the teletext decoder device later took to shorting its power supply, I found a tube with a Philips sticker on it (The brochure waxed most lyrical about Panasonics new technology with matt-black material around the phosphor pixels)

The offending teletext device was by Intermetall, and the set digitised video baseband from the tuner (and from Scart/S-video inputs) and did PAL/NTSC decoding digitally. The whole chipset was Intermetall. There wasn't much by Panasonic!

There has been so much horse-trading of companies and parts that it's very difficult to determine who made what and where.

Then later, of course, the tatmongers bought up every respected name they could get their hands on. What names remain that carry any real meaning nowadays?

It's worth remembering that in all the shenanigans of companies and brand names being traded like commodities, those doing the trading can make awesome mistakes. The pinnacle of which has to be VW trumping BMW's offer to buy Rolls-Royce Motors, and then discovering that what they'd bought didn't include the rights to use the name.

In the professional RF sphere, I'm trying to design radar transmitters and need to choose which semiconductor manufacturers to use. Motorola broke up into pieces and their RF line became Freescale. Philips broke up and theirs became NXP. NXP bought Freescale. NXP got hit with US anti-trust so they sold their original RF transistor arm to a Chinese consortium, and now make the Freescale devices under the NXP name. Meanwhile Qualcom is trying to take over NXP.

If that isn't enough... HP had broken up and its in-house RF semiconductor arm was sold off to a financial consortium and named 'Avago'. Avago (or more likely the consortium behind it) bought Broadcom, then decided to change its name to Broadcom. This new Broadcom is trying to takeover Qualcom!

Broadcom looks like a Singaporean company (though who knows where the real backing and control lies?) America is currently enjoying a protectionist phase, and a special executive order has just been issued blocking the Broadcom takeover citing national security grounds. Broadcom have consequently retracted their offer. But Broadcom have said they are working to move their headquarters to the US.... Watch this space as they say.

I only want to buy some transistors!

There is tremendous churn in semiconductors. It resembles what went on in radio/TV, but even before that the car trade had huge empires with dozens of brands, and then there was soap-powder.

It's always been difficult knowing who's who.

David