History and accomplishments of the General Radio Company, one of America’s first equipment manufacturers for the radio and electronics industry.
Founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1915, GR provided the tools and instruments that allowed the electronics industry to burgeon into today’s giant that fills our lives with radio, TV, computers, cell phones, DVDs and all the other electronic products in our homes, businesses and automobiles.
The GenRad 1863 Megohmmeter is the choice for production and inspection tests on devices with resistances up to 20 Tohms. The GenRad 1863 will measure resistance at any of five test voltages of: 50V, 100V, 200V, 250V, and 500 VDC. Compared to the GenRad 1864, which has adjustable test voltages from 10V to 1090V, this unit has fewer controls, and is the more economical of the two models. - GenRad 1863
This pioneer publication General Radio Experimenter first appeared in June 1926 and became the model for many others to follow (most notably the HP Journal). It began with engineers talking to radio amateur customers and gradually changed to engineers talking to other engineers, who might also be customers.
General Radio - GR
GR had an interesting philosophy of making instruments that were more modular than HP offerings. On the left is the popular HP 608 signal generator, which covered from 10 to 480 MHz in one unit. It had a zillion tubes, weighed a ton, and cost thousands.
Type 608 Oscillator
The GR 608 was the world’s first R-C oscillator, announced in April of 1939. It was designed by H. H. Scott who worked for GR at that time. It used a separate twin-tee R-C network for each frequency which was selected by a push button.