Ever Ready Radios

The Early Years and Lissen

Britain was slow to electrify and many of the rural areas remained without electricity for a long time. Due to this there was a large battery market and for many years large numbers of radio batteries were sold. In 1934 the sales of high tension radio batteries exceeded 15 million. The Ever Ready Company (Great Britain) Limited was the market leader and was part of an international group that originated in America at the turn of the century. It was incorporated in Canada in 1932 and the British company held quite a number of the shares.

In 1928 Ever Ready purchased Lissen Limited from its owner and Managing Director, T. N. Cole, for over 1 million pounds. Thomas Noah Cole was born in 1891 at Llanllwni, near Lampeter and brought up in Cardiff. He was interested in football and a keen supporter of the Cardiff team. His father was a marine engineer and Thomas's first job was selling bananas from a hand cart. In the early 1920's there was a lot of interest in radio and he realised that there would soon be a large market for radio components. With this in mind he moved to London and set up the Lissen Company. In 1923 he formed Lissen Limited, with works at Shepherd's Bush, to sell a large range of components, most of which were made at the factory. Thomas's wife Rebecca was the main shareholder and the company was very successful, employing around 3,000 people by the mid 1920's.

A Lissen moving coil loudspeaker from the early 1930's.

Vidor was named after the initials of Thomas's two daughters, Valerie and Denise, and his Wife Rebecca. As a concession to Ever Ready and his agreement with the company, he did not run Burndept and Vidor himself, but employed Mr. R.P. Richardson as Managing Director. In 1935 Thomas brought an action appealing against the agreement and engaged Sir Stafford Cripps, and two other eminent lawyers. On the eve of the action, an out of court settlement was made and from that time on, relations between Ever Ready and Vidor were strained. This wasn't helped by the fact that Vidor batteries were popular with radio dealers, because the company offered a 25 percent discount and the batteries sold at a very competitive price.

The Move to Wolverhampton

A photograph of the Efandem staff in 1913.

The front of the Ever Ready factory in Park Lane, in 2001. Most of the building has since been demolished.

During the first world war production was concentrated on the war effort and the items produced included torches, torch batteries, searchlights and sirens. After the war the company was in a poor financial state and the Managing Director was convicted for embezzling several thousand pounds. As luck would have it, Ever Ready was interested in the factory and purchased the company in the mid 1920s. The works went on to employ nearly 3,000 people and produced large numbers of dry batteries and radio receivers.

The Radio Era

Ever Ready's commercial policy was to encourage the use and production of battery powered equipment, and with this in mind the company entered the radio manufacturing business. The first two Ever Ready receivers appeared at the beginning of 1935 and strangely one of them was mains powered. Initially Ever Ready collaborated with Pye and Mr. Charles Orr Stanley who owned Pye, was invited onto Ever Ready's Board as a non-executive director. The chassis and cabinets were made by Pye and put-together at Ever Ready's Finsbury Park factory, which was supervised by Pye management. The collaboration only lasted for a few years. Just before the war Charles Stanley fell out with Magnus Goodfellow, who was Ever Ready's Chairman, and the venture came to an end.

The Lissen factory at Islington was still in production and at the beginning of the second world war it obtained a ministry contract to assemble and repair "Comfort Sets" for the armed forces. All went well until 1941, when the factory was destroyed in an air raid. The company was tied to the ministry contract and so it was essential to quickly find new premises, and continue production. Initially manufacturing began again at Amersham, Buckinghamshire, but the buildings were too small and unsuitable for this kind of use. Space was found at Canal Works and in 1942 Ever Ready began to build radios in Wolverhampton. More space was still required and so the radio department soon made its final move to Block 'A' of the Park Lane works.

The next model produced here was the Model 'C', which was still as heavy as the Model 'A', but had a more elegant appearance. One notable early receiver was the 'J' Type or "Saucepan Special" which was launched in September 1949. Laurence Orchard was one of the company's senior executives. In 1948 he was on a visit to Ever Ready's South African subsidiary, BEREC ( the British Ever Ready Export Company). 

The circuit diagram of the Berec 'Ballerina'.

The circuit diagram of the  type 'N' from 1951.

The 'J' Type was followed by the 'K' Type and then the 'N' Type, after which the company began to use the word 'Sky' in most of the names of new receivers. This came from the old Lissen days when Lissen produced its successful range of  Skyscraper receivers.  In 1957 the company produced the Sky Leader, which was Ever Ready's first transistorised receiver. The company's last valve receiver was the Sky Captain of 1961. The radios were very successful and production peaked at about 5,000 receivers per week. The factory produced over 1 million radios.

The Radio Department

Everyone in the department worked closely with other members of the team and helped to maintain the quality of the products. A family-business atmosphere prevailed and everyone enjoyed their time at Ever Ready.

The management team was as follows:

A pre-production batch of six or more receivers were assembled by a select group, who in co-operation with the drawing office and laboratory, carried the new model into production. These receivers were used to prove the design, establish quality standards, test procedures, and timings to determine the "rate for the job". Once finalised, the assembly of large quantities followed, along with test, packing and despatch.

By 1968 it was all over. Ever Ready decided to close the radio department and concentrate solely on battery manufacture at Park Lane. Just before closure the team designed and produced a prototype portable television receiver that ran on dry batteries. It used electrostatic deflection to reduce power consumption and was far ahead of its time.

Battery production continued at Park Lane until the spring of 1980, when the works finally closed. Demand for the company's products had slowly been falling and the works were no longer profitable.

I would like to thank Trevor Ridgeway and his wife, for all of their help in producing this section.