Tambalan Limited
Trading under the name of Ross Consumer Products and based in Farnworth-Bolton in the Greater Manchester area in England but also had manufacturing and a sales office in Hong Kong. Started selling audio accessories, personal stereos and suchlike in the late 1970's under the Ross brand, quickly established itself as something of a budget headphone specialist. Bought in February 1997 by Recoton after having been run at a loss for years and operated as a subsidiary of that company and as it's UK distribution arm until their demise in 2003.
Tandberg
Norwegian manufacturer of a long standing that started manufacturing radios as Tandberg Radiofabrikk in 1933 but in the end manufactured high end separates and open reel tape recorders under the name of Tandberg Audio Products A/S. Also owned the Radionette trademark. For the last few years it was stationed in Oslo and was closed down on the 31st of December 2000 (i.e. on the last day of the millennium, neat touch). For spare parts and service contact Dalens Elektronikk Service, for repairs in the USA contact Approved Audio Service or Soundsmith. A full history of the company can be found here (in Norwegian).
Tapecorder
Early Sony trademark, some of their first open reel tape recorders are only branded with this on the front although the full company name is usually on the identity label (Totsuko or Tokyo-Tsushin-Kogyo). Later on this name was used on recorders as a line brand but fell out of use in the 70's.
Tape Services
USA based manufacturer of accessories for consumer recording formats such as the Compact Cassette and the 8 Track Cartridge, bought by Recoton in 1976.
Teledyne (Acoustic Research)
Formed in 1960 as a manufacturer of communications equipment for the military market, highly profitable from the word go and this led to a series of acquisitions of fledging electronic manufacturers including Acoustic Research (AR) in 1967 which was run as a separate division called Teledyne Acoustic Research from then on. TAR branched into audio electronics with the introduction of the Amplifier in 1967 and later the same year started exporting audio products (AR had only been active in the USA market prior to that), opened a factory in Houghton Regis, near Dunstable in Bedfordshire in the UK in 1972 and a little later in Amersfoort in Holland. The European divisions also acted as a distributors for other hi-fi brands, for instance the UK division distributed Nad Electronics and Atron in the mid 70's. The AR division could make use of the parents company's high tech R&D and manufacturing facilities and was thus along with some of the larger British and German companies one of the first to use computer based FFT analysis and CAD in the design of loudspeakers in the 70's. Interestingly the company did introduce some premium priced products in the 70's under the Teledyne name rather than AR. The audio division was sold to International Jensen in the early 90's. The link here is to Teledyne Technologies which is an offshoot of the old Teledyne corp. rather than of the original company itself. Official homepage.
Telefunken
Originally founded on the 23rd of May in 1903 as Gesellschaft für drahtlose Telegraphie mbH (or the Wireless Telegraph Co.) and was initially a vehicle to pool the radio related patents held by Siemens and AEG with each company holding 50% of the ownership. Became one of the most innovative electronics company of the 20th century, amongst their achievements in the field of audio are the tape recorder, HighCom and TelCom noise reduction systems ( at the time much better than their Dolby equivalents), Direct Metal Mastering (DMM) technology used for pressing LP records, the PAL colour TV system (it and variants thereof used everywhere except in North America and Japan) and indeed the concept of the hi-fi separates was thought up by engineers of this company in the 1920's. Siemens shares in the company were bought by AEG in 1941 and Telefunken was run as an independent subsidary of that company from there on. By the early 80's the Telefunken consumer and professional AV prducts where incorperated into the AEG product lines and the consumer side of the business and trademark was sold to Thomson in the mid 80's who used by them for the German market for a while, the company was then sold do Gradiente, although for non-consumer products the company still exists as a AEG subsidiary.
Teslar
A company that was based in Litovel in Czechoslovakia (now in the Czech Republic) that normally traded under the Tesla brand. A huge company by Eastern European standards it manufactured anything from light bulbs to tape recorders, but was especially famous for it's turntables that occasionally turned up in the west under a variety of names including National Aura and Thorens. When the company was broken up in the early 1990's the turntable manufacturing part continued and produced the original Pro-Ject turntables. The turntable division was actually later taken over by Pro-Ject and serves as their main factory and parts of the Teslar valve manufacturing operation survive as JJ Electronic and KR Audio Electronics. P.S. Not to be confused with the Yugoslavian Tesla electric manufacturing company (More appropriately named since Tesla was a Serbo-Kroat).
Thermionic Products
Small British company based at the Hythe in Southampton, UK that made the Brush Soundmirror and Mail-A-Voice voice recorders under license from the Brush Development Company company in the late 1940's and early 50's but sold them using their own Recordon trademark. The company later manufactured or assembled other recorders from Brush but those were sold under the original Brush labs brand rather than as Recordon's, these were mostly professional recorders intended for specialised voice and data applications with the target market being airport authorities etc. The company also made a few other hi-fi products under license in the mid 50's but does not appear to have done any R&D of it's own, at the least no original products have been found. Allegedly the original owner of the company founded it on the proceedings of a novelty product business and he was by all accounts quite a character and we would appreciate it if someone out there actually remembers his name or has more background information on the company. Note that their early products sometimes say that the company was based in London, but that seems to have been "cosmetical" and the company was definitely in Southampton although they did open a London sales office in 1956, we are not sure about the timeline but it was apparently operating in 1949 and still alive in 1957, as far as can be gathered this company has no relation to any of the companies that currently operate under this name.
Thordarson Electric Manufacturing Company
A transformer manufacturer founded in Chicago, USA in 1895 by Icelandic immigrant Hjörtur Þórðarson (1867 - 1945), better known by the anglicised form of his name : Chester H. Thordarson. Hjörtur had worked for the Edison company as an armature winder but felt he could do better on his own and indeed quickly became the worlds largest manufacturer of transformers and gained notoriety in the audio world in the 20's when electrical amplification began to take hold and the company became the primary manufacturer and designer of audio transformers, or any transformers for that matter, even during the depression there were as many as 1800 employees at the factory. Hjörtur died in early 1945 and the company has been sold a few times since but the last company to bear the Thordarson name seems to have disappeared in the late 1990's. Interestingly despite putting in a lot of work in designing and improving audio transformers etc., the man seems to have had no interest in sound reproduction or in fact in music at all. An old catalogue from the company is reproduced here (ca 1937).
Thorn
English electronics conglomerate, owned a large number of CE companies such as Baird and Ferguson.
Tice Audio Products Inc.
Founded by husband and wife team of George and Francine Tice in 1985 and located in Jupiter, Florida USA. The company's first product was the Power Block One, a high end Power Conditioner which was something of a breakthrough product at the time, but the company gained notoriety in the early 90's with the TPT Clock, it was basically an ordinary digital clock that normally retailed for US$ 20, that the Tice company put through an propriety alternative energy process referred to as Tice Power Technology (TPT) and then was sold at USD 300 as a "power enhancer" for use with hi-fi systems (interestingly enough, when they introduced the technology they called it Tice Pulse Technology, hint hint), this process was consequently used on all of their power products. Company is listed as having gone out of business in 2001 by the US government which indicated that it went bankrupt, but interestingly enough George Tice strongly denied this in a letter to Stereophile later that same year and maintained that he was simply soliciting for a take-over partner.
Timothy Eaton Company See --> Eaton's
Tobishi
A Japanese company that made tape recorders in the 60's under the Tobicorder name and televisions and other consumer electronics in the 70's and was quite well known as such at time, the last we heard from them was in the 80's as a large OEM of computer monitors. The name sometimes appears on low budget Chinese made consumer audio and AV products, primarily in Israel and on mainland China but that appears to be without any connection to the original company, in Israel the trademark law allows natives to appropriate foreign trade marks for local use and the use of it in China appears to be as a Toshiba look alike, as is the case with Chinese audio brands as Pieonear and Kingwood, a quite common practice in a country were Roman letters are not the norm. Name translates as Eastern Diamond.
Tonacord
Small specialised supplier of phonographic products based in Eckernförde in Germany, mostly active in the early 80's and most products with their name on them appear to have been made by others but the company is still around as a store and do supply generic replacement stylii and Ortofon pickups. Official homepage.
Totsuko See --> Sony
Transcriber, Inc.
USA based distributer/marketer of phonographic stylii and accessories, ceased operations in 1987 or early 88 and the accessories product lines were purchased by Recoton.
Transcriptors Ltd.
A company founded in London, England in the mid 1960's by David Gammon, a technician from Coventry. First products from the company were a tonarm and turntables manufactured in limited quantities but a proper factory was opened in 1967 and volume production started. The company made for the most part visually exciting turntables and related products that sold to a similar market that buys style systems today, in fact made some of the best looking turntables ever manufactured, many of the designs featuring novel and original features but typically not all that well engineered, the company's products often also suffered from the same fit'n'finish problems that plagued the British industry at this time, this was not helped by the hype that the company made about it's products and more often than not did not manage to live up to. Transcriptors also made display turntables for the retail industry and a few other non audio products. The company had it's heyday in the late 60's to early 70's when it received numerous accolades for the futuristic design of their Hydraulic Reference turntable and that design often featured in movies and chic magazines as props. The company began to falter after a move to a new factory in Ireland around 1973, many of the critical machined parts that had been bought in such as bearings were now made in house and the quality control was seriously lacking, by the late 70's the quality of the construction had become so bad that even some of the smaller distributors started to build turntables from unassembled kits rather than buy them delivered factory built and by 1980 the company was no more. More info on the background of the company can be found at the homepage of Transcriptors Limited (2000) although that history is a bit "romantic", for a lack of a better word, spares for some of the original company's products can also be had there.
Trio See --> Kenwood
Tungsram
This Hungarian company was one of the first producers of light bulbs in the world and remained a large producer of valves and light bulbs until it was broken up in the early 90's and the bits sold off to various western companies, General Electric bought a large part of it in 1990 and so did Shréder a little bit later, both companies operate using the original name. Made radios both under the Tungsram name and using the Orion brand, continued making radios and hi-fi products at the least into the 70's, produced some of the best valves that were made in Europe and should not be confused with some other eastern European products. Official homepage. Shréder Group
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