Tennelec
| Company type | Division |
|---|---|
| Industry | Electronics |
| Founded | early 1960s |
| Founder | Edward Fairstein |
| Headquarters | Oak Ridge , United States |
| Products | Nuclear instrumentation, programmable scanning radios |
| Parent | Canberra Industries (owned by Areva) |
Tennelec was an American electronics firm established in the early 1960s by Edward Fairstein in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company initially gained recognition for manufacturing instruments used in nuclear research and later expanded into producing programmable scanning radios.
An early breakthrough for Tennelec was the TC-200 amplifier, which positioned the company as a prominent provider of nuclear instrumentation. Leveraging this success, Tennelec went on to create detectors and particle counters critical for accurate nuclear measurements.
During the 1970s, Tennelec launched pioneering scanning radios. Their first programmable radio scanner, the Memoryscan, originated from the Tennelec Commercial Products Division in 1974 and was subsequently renamed the Memoryscan 1 (model MS-1). This was succeeded by an enhanced version, the Memoryscan 2 (model MS-2). Unlike previous scanners that relied on hand-cut crystals for programming, the MS-1 and MS-2 enabled users to select up to 16 frequencies using binary codes entered via pushbuttons, with toggle switches to activate desired frequencies. This design allowed versatile monitoring options, such as listening to police frequencies one evening and fire department channels another.
The Tennelec MCP-1, introduced at the Winter 1976 Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago, was the first scanner to feature direct decimal frequency input through a keypad. It supported up to 16,000 frequencies across low, high, and UHF bands and was sold at $399.95. The MCP-1 rapidly gained popularity and was distributed by Radio Shack, which also acquired thousands of copies of Police Call, a frequency guide created to assist users.
Despite these innovations, Tennelec faced bankruptcy shortly after releasing their newest radio models, partly due to inadequate quality control within their scanner product line. Meanwhile, competitors like SBE, Regency, and Electra had already introduced their own programmable scanners.
Today, Tennelec continues to operate in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, functioning as a division of Canberra Industries, which is under the ownership of Areva.
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