The computer and the transistor in the 1950s joined with the automobile and the teenager to create a new generation of stereo "Hi-Fi" components. Magnetic tape and FM radio made possible a new quality of sound. The tape recorder industry quickly expanded in Europe and Asia after the war. In Britain, EMI used the German design to produce the BTR1 for its Abbey Road studio in November 1947. The Grudig Company in Germany was started by radio dealer Max Grundig after World War II to produce radio repair instruments. It expanded into radio set production, making the Heinzelmann in 1946 and the Grundig Boy in 1949 that was one of the first portable cabinet radios. Grundig took over the Lumophon factory in Nuremberg and in 1951 began production of its first tape recorder, the Reporter 300. Willi Studer in Zurich produced his first recorder, the Dynavox, in 1949 and the Studer 27 in 1951 and the Revox A77 in 1967. Stefan Kudelski, a physics student in Switzerland, built the Nagra I portable tape recorder with wind-up motor in 1951 used by the Everest explorer Raymond Lambert and by the deep-sea bathyscaph Trieste. In Japan, Sony (then called Totsuko) in 1950 sold its first G-type tape recorder in Tokyo at a price of $400 but it weighed over 100 lbs. Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita licensed transistor technology from Western Electric in 1953, and began a consumer electronics revolution with transistor radios, TVs (the TV8-301 of 1960 was nicknamed "Kennedy's dog" because JFK kept a set near him), and the first all-transistor tape recorder in 1961.
Hi-Fi components
