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C. Lorenz AG (1880-1958) was a German electrical and electronics firm primarily located in Berlin. It innovated, developed and marketed products for electric lighting, telegraphy, telephony, radar, and radio. It was acquired by ITT in 1930, and became part of the newly founded company Standard Elektrik Lorenz (SEL) in 1958. ==History== Around 1870, Carl Lorenz (1844-1889) opened a shop in Berlin to manufacture electrical lighting products. The shop entered the telegraph field in 1880, taking the name ''C. Lorenz Telegraphenbauanstalt''. Following the death of Carl Lorenz, the firm was acquired in 1890 by textile businessman Robert Held (1862-1924). Held retained the firm's original name and Carl's brother, Alfred Lorenz, was made the technical director. Under Held, the firm became a major supplier of telegraph and signaling equipment for the National Railroad. Held then expanded into the telephone market in 1893, buying Lewart and through this acquisition gaining a telephone-supplier position with the Postal Service. Typewriters were added as products in 1898, and, around the turn of the century, operating branches were added in several cities. In 1906, the firm registered for public trading as ''C. Lorenz AG'' (hereafter "Lorenz").〔("Fifty Years of the C. Lorenz Company, 1880-1930" ) Smithsonian Institution Libraries Trade Literature Collection〕 At the start of World War I, Lorenz had grown to about 3,000 employees and was a major supplier to the German military of land-line telephone and telegraph equipment and had also entered the wireless field. For this expansion, a large factory was built in the Tempelhof district of Berlin, and by 1918, the headquarters and research operations also occupied this facility. When World War I ended, Lorenz greatly decreased in size and turned to producing home radios, broadcast transmitters, and aircraft communications sets. In 1919, Lorenz initiated radio broadcasting (transmitting voice and music) in Germany, and their first home receiver, the ''Liebhaber-Empfänger'', was introduced in 1923. Throughout the 1920s, radios and associated valves (vacuum tubes), were major products manufactured by Lorenz. In this, the firm was a primary competitor of Telefunken. After Held's death, the controlling stock became available and was eventually bought in 1930 by ''Standard Elektrizitätsgesellschaft'', a subsidiary of the American corporation International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT); Lorenz as a firm, however, continued to operate independently. In 1932, development of a new type of radio navigation system – soon known worldwide as the Lorenz beam – gave a major extension of their aircraft radio business. Lorenz patented the ferrite antenna in 1935, and thereafter it was used in most home receivers.〔("History of the radio manufacturer Lorenz" )〕 As Germany prepared for another war, Lorenz again became strongly engaged in manufacturing materiel for the military. Production of radio tubes for the German Army started in 1937, and was followed by the building of communication sets and similar electronics. It has been claimed that the parent company, ITT, had ties to the Nazi Party.〔Sutton, Antony C., "I.T.T. Works Both Sides of the War", Ch. 5 in ''Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler'', Studies in Reformed Theology, 2000’ http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/wall_street/index.html〕 World War II began with Germany invading Poland on 1 September 1939. Lorenz was already a major supplier for the German Military, and soon greatly expanded its production facilities. In 1940, Lorenz acquired ''G. Schaub Apparatebau-Gesellschaft''; its many factories were mainly used for low-cost manufacturing. Military products from Lorenz during World War II included land-based and airborne radars, two-way radio sets, wire recorders, radio tubes, and Germany's most secure communications device, the Lorenz cipher machine. Lorenz owned 25% of Focke-Wulf, the German aircraft firm that built some of the most successful Luftwaffe fighter aircraft. For wartime work, Lorenz, like many other German manufacturing firms, turned to inmates of Government-operated labor camps.〔Sampson, Anthony; ''The Sovereign State: The Secret History of ITT''; Hodder and Stoughton, 1973; ISBN 0-340-17195-2〕 At the high point of the war, Lorenz had about 24,000 workers in 12 operating facilities. The largest factories were in Berlin, Plauen, Mühlhausen (Vacuum tube factory), and underground shops within large caves in the Hanover area. A women's slave labor camp, a branch of the Buchenwald concentration camp, was directly outside Mühlhausen.〔("Report on C. Lorenz A.G." ), Combined Intelligence Objective Sub-committee G-2 Division, H.M. Stationery Office, May 1945; 〕 In 1948, Lorenz started anew. Some factories had been closed, and those in the Eastern Zone were either taken over by, or moved to, the Soviet Union. Lorenz headquarters moved to the Zuffenhausen district of Stuttgart. During the 1950s, Lorenz recovered strongly and had several branches: Berlin-Tempelhof (radio communications and broadcasting research); Esslingen am Neckar (radio tubes); Landshut (electrical machines, broadcasting equipment, and signal systems); Pforzheim I (research and model workshop for small-scale transmitting equipment); Pforzheim II (telex factory); and Schaub Pforzheim (radio and television receivers). In 1954, the brand name of radio and television sets was changed to ''Schaub-Lorenz''.〔("Lorenz" ), in Vintage Radio〕 In 1958, C. Lorenz AG ceased to exist as an independent company. ITT reorganized its operations in Germany by merging Lorenz, Standard Elektrizitätsgesellschaft, and several others into a new company called ''Standard Elektrik Lorenz'' (or SEL). In 1961, the company also becomes the major shareholder of radio firm ''Graetz''. In 1987, SEL, by then an extremely diversified company, merged with French companies ''Compagnie Générale d'Electricité'' and ''Alcatel'', with the new company being known simply as ''Alcatel'' and the German part known as ''Alcatel SEL AG''. The new company eventually sold to ''Nokia-Graetz GmbH'' the operations that had earlier been Lorenz.〔("ITT's History in Consumer Electronics" )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「C. Lorenz AG」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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