Magnavox: The Moving Coil Speaker, the Odyssey Console and Sonobuoys

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Magnavox, Latin for great or loud voice, grew out of a Napa, California lab, the Commercial Wireless and Development Company, run from 1911 by engineers Edwin Pridham and Peter L. Jensen. In 1914 they patented the moving coil loudspeaker, U.S. patent 1,105,924, which used an electromagnetic coil to drive a cone, so volume depended on electrical power, not the size of a horn. In July 1917 the company merged with the Sonora Phonograph distributor to form Magnavox, with Frank Morgan Steers as first president. Jensen left in the late 1920s to found the Jensen Radio Manufacturing Company in Chicago, while Pridham stayed and Magnavox moved manufacturing to Fort Wayne, Indiana in the 1930s, building radio and phonograph cabinets and later television tubes. In the 1960s it built the first plasma displays for the military, and in 1972 it released the Odyssey, the first home video game console, followed by the microprocessor-based Odyssey 2 in 1978.

North American Philips took a majority stake in 1974 and full ownership in 1975. Philips sold CD players co-developed with Sony under the mass-market Magnavox name while Sony sold its CDP-101 in high-end audio shops. In 1981 Philips merged the Sylvania, Philco and Magnavox consumer divisions and centralized production in Greeneville, Tennessee. The Fort Wayne defense unit, Magnavox Electronic Systems, built satellite communications, artillery data systems and sonobuoys; it went to Hughes Electronics in 1995 and then Raytheon, whose sonobuoy unit was sold to Ultra Electronics in 1998. Today Magnavox survives as a licensed name on electronics made by other companies.

• A sonobuoy dropped by parachute from an aircraft lowers a hydrophone on a cable and radios submarine propeller sounds back to the plane.
• The Odyssey used analog logic circuits, not a microprocessor, to move glowing squares on the TV screen.
• Magnavox's name went on the 1985 VideoWriter word processor and on rebadged Philips personal computers in the early 1990s, and a combined Philips Magnavox brand confused shoppers before the names were separated again.
• A 2013 deal to sell Philips' audio and video business to Funai Electric for about 150 million euros collapsed, and an arbitration tribunal awarded Philips compensation in 2016.
• In January 2025 licensing firm Curtis International acquired the global rights to the Magnavox brand.