Pye (electronics company)
UK electronics company founded in 1896 in Cambridge
Pye Ltd was an electronics company founded in 1896 in Cambridge, England, as a manufacturer of scientific instruments. The company merged with EKCO in 1960. Philips of the Netherlands acquired a majority shareholding in 1967, and later gained full ownership.
Early growth
W. G. Pye & Co. Ltd was founded in 1896 in Cambridge by William Pye, superintendent of the Cavendish Laboratory workshop, as a part-time business making scientific instruments. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the company employed 40 people manufacturing instruments used for teaching and research. The war increased demand for such instruments and the War Office needed experimental thermionic valves. The manufacture of such components afforded the company the technical knowledge needed to develop the first wireless receiver when the first UK broadcasts were made by the British Broadcasting Company in 1922. Instruments continued to be designed and manufactured under W G Pye Ltd, later situated in York Street Cambridge, while a separate company was started to build wireless components in a factory to become known as Cambridge Works at Church Path, Chesterton.
A series of receivers made at Church Path were given positive reviews by Popular Wireless magazine.
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This entry incorporates text from “Pye (electronics company)” 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.