EKCO
British electronics and plastics company producing radio and television sets from 1924 until 1960
EKCO (abbreviated from Eric Kirkham Cole Limited) was a British electronics company founded by Eric Kirkham Cole CBE in Southend-on-Sea during 1924. The company started out by making radio sets, before progressing onto television sets and lighting. The company's knowledge of radio saw it expand into developing radar before and during World War II. The company expanded into making its own plastic bodies for radio sets, with EKCO Plastics later becoming a manufacturer of domestic wares. The company merged in 1960 with Pye to become British Electronic Industries Ltd, which was purchased by Dutch firm Philips in 1967, with the EKCO brand disappearing from brown goods during the 1970s.
Early history
The company's founder Eric Kirkham Cole was born in July 1901 at Prittlewell, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, and was educated at Southend Day Technical School, followed by a three-year apprenticeship. He joined his father's business in fitting electrics to houses. Cole and his future wife Muriel Bradshaw started out making radio sets in 1922 in a rented room in Westcliff-on-Sea, at a rate of about six a week, which were all battery powered as per the norm at the time.
William Streatfield Verrells, a schoolmaster and freelance journalist from Southend-on-Sea, wrote an article in a local newspaper asking if it was possible to power a radio set from the mains electricity supply rather than batteries. Cole saw a possible business opportunity and set about building his battery eliminator, the H.T. Eliminator, which he later demonstrated to Verrells. Suitably impressed, Verrells joined Cole in a business venture, with Cole manufacturing the battery eliminators, and Verrells marketing them with both Cole, Verrells and Bradshaw selling sets by knocking on doors in the town that had a radio aerial outside their property.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “EKCO” as british electronics and plastics company producing radio and television sets from 1924 until 1960. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as british electronics and plastics company producing radio and television sets from 1924 until 1960. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5323238. VIAF identifies the subject as 152704539. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1924, 1960, 1967 and 1901.
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This entry incorporates text from “EKCO” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.