Tandberg was an electronics manufacturer located in Oslo, Norway (production, sales and distribution) and New York City, United States (sales and distribution). The company began in the radio field, but became more widely known for their reel-to-reel tape recorders as well as cassette decks[2] and televisions. The original company went bankrupt in 1978, after a sharp financial downturn. The following year, the company re-formed whilst its data division was split off as Tandberg Data, including the tape recording division, which reduced its scope to data recording.
Over time the original Tandberg company became increasingly involved in the teleconferencing systems, and became a leader in that field. The company's main competitor was Polycom and other competitors were HP, Sony, Radvision, VTEL and Aethra.[3]
Cisco Systems acquired Tandberg on 19 April 2010.[4] Tandberg Data became a German company dedicated to making computer tape storage systems.
History
Tandbergs Radiofabrikk
The company was founded by Vebjørn Tandberg as Tandbergs Radiofabrikk (Tandberg's Radio Factory) in Oslo in 1933. The company's first radio was named "Tommeliten" (Tom Thumb), and used only earphones. This was followed by the "Corona" with a loudspeaker. In 1934, the first "Huldra" radio was launched, followed in 1936 by the "Sølvsuper". During the early years, radios, loudspeakers and microphones were the main output from the factory. The Sølvsuper and the Huldra radios became the foundation for Tandberg's success.
In the early 1950s, Tandberg opened a branch plant at Kjelsås[5] (in Oslo) to produce reel-to-reel tape recorders. Their first model was introduced to the market in 1952. Over the next decade, Tandberg quickly incorporated a number of leading-edge concepts; the model 2 Hi-Fi of 1956 had three tape transport speeds, allowing improved high-frequency response. The model 3 Stereo from 1957 was Tandberg's first stereo system which allowed playback of stereo tapes, however the ability to record in stereo was not made available until the introduction of the model 5 in 1958, which allowed for the connection of an external recording amplifier to record the second channel onto the tape. Their first full stereo system, the model 6 of 1960, featured four amplifiers, two for recording and two for playback respectively, giving the operator total control of both audio channels. In the 1960s, Tandberg introduced the
Companies sharing the name
There are also other companies called Tandberg with roots in the same parent company, although not necessarily with common ownership:
- SANAKO/Tandberg Educational
- Tandberg Audio
- Tandberg Unterrichtstechnik (Deutschland)
- Tandberg Data
- Tandberg Storage
- Tandberg Telecom – fully owned subsidiary
- Tandberg Television
Products
With the supporting system included in the Immersive systems or dedicated management servers, all these systems can interact with each other and be used in one conference session: people using a video-enabled smartphone or tablet can participate in a conference-call setup using the CTS models, and everyone automatically receives both optimal image quality and features for their system. The proprietary protocol used in the Immersive TP systems can interact with industry open standards used in mobile phones, tablets and video-enabled VOIP devices regardless of their vendor: any device can connect to any other system[24][29] The product portfolio of existing Cisco video conferencing solutions and the Tandberg systems are now combined in one portfolio. The Tandberg product names have changed, but they are still being offered using the Tandberg brand name, and overlaps still remain in the portfolio.[31]
Controversy
In November 2010, Fiona Glaser, an x264 developer, published information in which she claims that one of Tandberg Telecom's patent applications from December 2008, contains a step-by-step description of an algorithm she committed to the x264 codebase around two months earlier.[32] This was relayed by media, which remarked that the employee who filed the patent was following the x264 project IRC development channel and was known to the project developers,[33] leading to Tandberg claiming that it discovered the algorithm independently. Copies of e-mails that demonstrate this, together with an affidavit and an Information disclosure statement was filed by Tandberg with the United States Patent and Trademark Office in June 2011. [34]
External links
References
- Annual Report 2008 Tandberg, retrieved 4 December 2009^
- Test Cassettendecks with Tandberg TCD 3014 A, 1988 (PDF, 6 MB), retrieved 22 May 2020.^
- Hermann Simon mentioned this company in his correspondent Book as an example of a "Hidden Champion" (Simon, Hermann: Hidden Champions of the 21st Century : Success Strategies of unknown World Market Leaders. London: Springer, 2009.- ISBN 978-0-387-98147-5.)^