VITAVOX

Vitavox of Westmorland Road, London, NW9. Telephone: Colindale 8671. Cables: "Vitavox, London"

• 1931 Company founded by Len Young with premises in Willesden. 

• 1933 The first exports were to Germany as the Company's aim was to establish an international market for its products. The Company carried out its first work for the Royal Navy, designing and manufacturing microphones and loudspeakers.

• WWII. Supply to the Navy reached such high proportions in the war years of 1939-45, that company staff were working twenty hours a day, seven days a week with a greatly increased staff, in order to supply them with thousands of microphones and loudspeakers they required.

• Post-WWII. After the war, the Company set out to establish itself internationally in the new growing 'Hi Fi' market and succeeded in doing so at the upper end of the quality market. The Company also achieved one of the biggest 'hi fi's' in its history, supplying loudspeakers for the great Todd-AO cinema installations.

• The Services, the railways, coastal authorities, industry generally-all requiring more perfect sound reproduction and loudspeaker facilities with a greater range of increasingly complex units.

• 1947 Listed Exhibitor - British Industries Fair. Manufacturers of High Grade sound Equipment for the Cinema, Radio and Public Address trades including Cone and Pressure Type Moving Coil Loudspeaker Units, Microphones, Stands, Circular and Multicellular Horns and associated apparatus. (Olympia, Ground Floor, Stand No. C.1509) 

• 1950s From the nineteen fifties, the Navy, Army, and Air Force needed increasing power and experimentation in the production of more robust and powerful speaker systems for their use is continuous - ranging from very powerful loudspeakers for the RAF for laboratory sound vibration tests on components, to speaker developments for the latest naval frigates, command cruisers, destroyers and mine hunters.

• 1969 Len Young's sons, Neil Young and David Young were appointed Managing Director and Technical Director respectively.

• 1974 Len Young died. He had worked as Chairman of the Company until his death.