Redifon
of Broomhill Road, London, the principal manufacturing company of the Rediffusion group.
1931 Rediffusion Limited formed the company
1945 Rediffusion, a subsidiary of Broadcast Relay Service Ltd, organised a demonstration of Redifon radio heating, a development from wartime technology for peaceful uses[1]
1946 Redifon was incorporated
1948 The company moved to Crawley in West Sussex.
1949 Name changed.
1949 Makers of airport radio (see adverts)
1951 First Redifon flight simulator had been installed[2]
1956 Supplied complete radio communications system to the Iranian police and other countries[3]
1961 Manufacturers of radio communications equipment, industrial electronic equipment, flight and radar simulators, computers. 2,000 employees.
1962 Joint venture of Research and Control Instruments with Redifon, pooling the 2 companies' induction and dielectric heating businesses; to be called Intertherm; based in Brixton[4]
1966 Redifon's activities included[5]:
- Redifon Aircraft Flight Simulators
- Redifon Radio Communication Equipment
- Redifon-Astrodata
- Plastics - Rediweld and Glass Fibre Developments
- Redifon (Canada) 1964
- Radio Heating Equipment - Intertherm
- Television Receivers
1967 After several years losses, Rediffusion sold its interest in Intertherm to Philips Electrical[6]
1968 Voice-frequency terminal for the Royal Navy.
1974 Developed with flight simulators.[7] (Company profile article)
1981 the parent company British Electric Traction Co changed the company name to Rediffusion Simulation Limited (RSL) to take advantage of the then familiar Rediffusion brand name.
1988 the company was bought by Hughes Aircraft and renamed Hughes Rediffusion Simulation (HRSL).
1994 the company was taken over by Thomson-CSF, who merged it with Link Miles (acquired by Thomson-CSF in 1990) and renamed the company Thomson Training & Simulation (TTSL). The merged companies were based at the Manor Royal site at Crawley.
Before long, Thomson amalgamated MEL Communications Ltd. with Redifon Radio and it became know as Redifon-MEL Ltd. [8]
1998 the simulation business of Wormald Technlogy of Australia was bought and subsequently renamed Thales Training & Simulation Pty Ltd (TTSP). In the USA, Burtek, bought in 1979 by Thomson-CSF, was renamed Thomson Training & Simulation Inc.
2000 Thomson-CSF was renamed Thales.
At the end of 2000, the company was renamed Thales Training & Simulation (TTS) when the parent company was re-branded as Thales.
2012 Thales sold its civilian fixed-wing simulation business to L-3 Communications Link Simulation and Training in August. The purchase included the TTS Crawley plant but not Thales's military rotary-wing (helicopter) simulation business.
See Also
Sources of Information
- The Engineer of 5th July 1968 p32
- 1961 Dun and Bradstreet KBE
- Wikipedia [1]