Vintage Recorders: The Telectro Story

Telectro was one of the most important brands of consumer tape recorders from the 1950s through the 1970s, and its maker, Telectrosonic, was also notable as a manufacturer of electronic equipment for the military. The company’s founder, Stanley L. Rosenberg, was born in 1918, the son of immigrants, and earned a degree in electrical engineering from the City College of New York. During World War II he was part of the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Telectrosonic Corporation was created some time after the war, and was advertising its tape recorders nationally by 1955. The company was best known for its “Telectro” brand of consumer recorders, but also supplied recorders and recorder chassis as an “OEM” supplier to firms such as Firestone, J. C. Penney, and Emerson, which sold the recorders under their own brand names.
Like many U.S. recorder manufacturers, Telectro’s sales were severely affected by a wave of high quality Japanese imports, beginning in the late 1950s. In response, Rosenberg announced he would take the company public in 1959, initially selling 200,000 shares at $3 a share (par value) in early 1960. The money he raised helped pay off debt and finance a plant expansion, but it was not enough to save the dying tape recorder business. By the 1960s, the company had shifted to professional and military systems. Rosenberg hoped to find success with a product called Telectrovision, which was apparently similar to a videophone. He also tried to develop a circuit for tape recorders that would log the radio recording habits of consumers for the purposes of collecting royalties on them. By 1966, the company was in such a dire financial position that Rosbenberg sold out to Emerson Radio, its former customer.
By the late 1970s, the company was primarily building electronics systems under contract to military and other government clients. The company continued to make recorders and electronics products for many years. The name changed to Telectro Systems Corp. at some point, and the headquarters moved to Queens, New York. In 1983, Telectro was sold to Alarm Products International, a subsidiary of New Dimension Resources Ltd., of Toronto. Founder Stanley L. Rosenberg died August 3, 2001.