A.C. Cossor Ltd. was a British

electronics The field of electronics is a branch of physics and electrical engineering that deals with the emission, behaviour and effects of electrons using electronic devices. Electronics uses active devices to control electron flow by amplification ...

company founded in 1859. The company's products included valves,

radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmit ...

s, televisions and

military A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. It is typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with its members identifiable by their distinct ...

electronics. The company was purchased by Raytheon in 1961.

Early history

The story of A.C. Cossor Ltd. began in 1859 when the company was established by Alfred Charles Cossor in

Clerkenwell Clerkenwell () is an area of central London, England. Clerkenwell was an ancient parish from the mediaeval period onwards, and now forms the south-western part of the London Borough of Islington. The well after which it was named was redisco ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

to manufacture scientific glassware. His eldest son, also called Alfred Charles Cossor joined the company in 1875, and it was he who founded the A.C. Cossor electronics company. The company's expertise in the manufacture of electrical glassware, such as early cathode ray tubes and

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

tubes, led the company to diversify into electronics. The younger son Frank Cossor joined the company in 1885, and eventually took over the running of the original scientific glassware company which remains to this day as Accoson, a manufacturer of sphygmomanometers. Cossor, a go-ahead electronics firm, designed, and manufactured electronic thermionic valves, domestic radio sets and television receivers both before, and after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. During the War, their work on the

Chain Home Chain Home, or CH for short, was the codename for the ring of coastal Early Warning radar stations built by the Royal Air Force (RAF) before and during the Second World War to detect and track aircraft. Initially known as RDF, and given the off ...

radar Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the distance (''ranging''), angle, and radial velocity of objects relative to the site. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, w ...

alongside Pye and

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...

brought great prestige to the company. By the late 1950s, Cossor had sold its consumer electronics interests to the

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

electronics giant. Later, a merger with American Raytheon was to come, and today, Cossor is still part of the American group.

Company timeline

* Early examples of X-ray tubes are produced for the scientists William Crookes and Oliver Lodge. * In 1902 the company produces the first British-made Braun tube. * 1904 Experimental valves are produced by Cossor for Ambrose Fleming. * 1908 A.C. Cossor leaves his father's business to found his own company. * William Richard Bullimore, an Australian-born electrical engineer who emigrated to the UK as a child, joins Cossor. Bullimore was responsible for the introduction of new valve types, and would eventually become managing director of the company, a post he held until his death at the age of 50, on 27 July 1937. * During the first world war the company produces valves for the war effort including large numbers of Type R valves, a generic valve design produced by several companies. * In 1918 the company moves to Highbury, London, to a factory called the "Aberdeen Works". (The office building which was called Cossor House is still extant, having been renamed Ladbroke House and now houses The London Screen Academy.) * After World War I the company produces its first radio sets in kit form. * 1924 Cossor introduces the first British valves to incorporate an oxide-coated filament. * 1927 The company launches its famous "Melody Maker" radio set. * 1930 First British RF

pentode A pentode is an electronic device having five electrodes. The term most commonly applies to a three-grid amplifying vacuum tube or thermionic valve that was invented by Gilles Holst and Bernhard D.H. Tellegen in 1926. The pentode (called a ''tripl ...

valve made by Cossor. * 1932 The company introduces its first cathode ray

oscilloscope An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...

. * 1935 A Cossor

cathode ray tube A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), pictu ...

is used in the receiver of the Daventry Experiment for

research, conducted to investigate the signals produced by reflections off a Heyford bomber of the output of the

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transmitter In electronics and telecommunications, a radio transmitter or just transmitter is an electronic device which produces radio waves with an antenna (radio), antenna. The transmitter itself generates a radio frequency alternating current, which i ...

at Daventry. * 1936 The company sells its first television receiver. * 1937 Receivers for the

primary radar system, the world's first radar air defence system, are built by Cossor. * Cossor remains pre-eminent in the development of the cathode ray oscilloscope with the introduction of a dual-beam version of the instrument. * 1938 Cossor becomes a

public limited company A public limited company (legally abbreviated to PLC or plc) is a type of public company under United Kingdom company law, some Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth jurisdictions, and the Republic of Ireland. It is a limited liability company ...

. * 1938 In co-operation with the Army Cell at the Bawdsey Research Station, the company begins production development of the receiver for the GL1, the first British heavy anti-aircraft gun-laying radar. * 1939 The company switches to war production. * Cossor becomes involved in the early development of airborne

IFF In logic and related fields such as mathematics and philosophy, "if and only if" (shortened as "iff") is a biconditional logical connective between statements, where either both statements are true or both are false. The connective is bicon ...

radar. The development team includes spy

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. * 1943 The company moves its valve and CRT business into a new wholly owned subsidiary Electronic Tubes Ltd (ETEL) based at High Wycombe. * In 'Plan for Post-War Broadcasting in Britain' Cossor Research Laboratory's K.I. Jones proposed 924 radio stations on FM (then known as short waves). * 1945

Secondary radar Secondary surveillance radar (SSR)''Secondary Surveillance Radar'', Stevens M.C. Artech House, is a radar system used in air traffic control (ATC), that unlike primary radar systems that measure the bearing and distance of targets using the d ...

for air traffic control becomes a key area of development for Cossor. * 1949

purchases ordinary (voting) shares in ETEL, and takes management control. Cossor retains an investment in ETEL, purchasing its valve requirements from EMI and from MOV, which was jointly owned by EMI and GEC. * 1956 Cossor disposes of its holding in ETEL sometime after 1956, and withdraws from valve and CRT manufacture. * 1957 Cossor-made radars with detection range of almost 400 miles, capable of detecting and monitoring flight operations of individual fighter planes well inside

Eastern Europe Eastern Europe is a subregion of the Europe, European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural, and socio-economic connotations. The vast majority of the region is covered by Russ ...

, delivered to key NATO stations along the

Iron Curtain The Iron Curtain was the political boundary dividing Europe into two separate areas from the end of World War II in 1945 until the end of the Cold War in 1991. The term symbolizes the efforts by the Soviet Union (USSR) to block itself and its s ...

borders. * 1958 Cossor sells its radio and television business to

. * 1958 Company moves to

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Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

. * 1960 Company branched out into the missile guidance and ground support equipment field, for that purpose Cossor has hired highly qualified missile engineers from the guided weapons department of the

Royal Aircraft Establishment The Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) was a British research establishment, known by several different names during its history, that eventually came under the aegis of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom), UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), bef ...

and from Ferranti Ltd. * 1961 Cossor is acquired by Raytheon, after making trading losses in 1959/60 had depressed the share price. These losses were reputed to be following disputes over costs of the Fylingdales BMEWS contract.

Products and activities

Cossor has designed IFF equipment for the British Aerospace

Rapier missile Rapier is a surface-to-air missile developed for the British Army to replace their towed Bofors 40/L70 anti-aircraft guns. The system is unusual as it uses a manual optical guidance system, sending guidance commands to the missile in flight over ...

, Shorts Blowpipe missile, Bofors

RBS-70 RBS 70 (Robotsystem 70) is a man-portable air-defense system (MANPADS) designed for anti-aircraft warfare in all climate zones and with little to no support from other forces. Originally designed and manufactured by the Swedish defence firm of ...

, Ericsson's

Giraffe radar The Saab (formerly Ericsson Microwave Systems AB) Giraffe Radar is a family of land and naval two- or three-dimensional G/H-band (4 to 8 GHz) passive electronically scanned array radar-based surveillance and air defense command and contro ...

and the

Contraves Rheinmetall Air Defence AG is a division of German armament manufacturer Rheinmetall, created when the company's Oerlikon Contraves unit was renamed on 1 January 2009 and integrated with Rheinmetall's other air-defence products. Oerlikon Contr ...

Italiana's LPD-20 air defence radar. Typical applications of the Cossor's IFF system include

Redeye Red eye, red-eye, redeye or variants may refer to: Related to the eye * Red-eye effect, in photographs * Red eye (medicine), an eye that appears red due to illness or injury * Red, an extremely rare eye color due to albinism * Red eyeshine i ...

, Stinger, and

SA-7 The 9K32 Strela-2 (russian: Cтрела, "arrow"; NATO reporting name SA-7 Grail) is a light-weight, shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missile (or MANPADS) system. It is designed to target aircraft at low altitudes with passive infrared homing gui ...

missiles and other short range air defence guns and missiles."New armaments: Free-standing TFF", ''African Defence Journal'', October 1982, p. 46, ISSN 0244-0342.

References

A. C. Cossor history

Raytheon(history of A. C. Cossor Ltd.)

thevalvepage

HC16. 20 Dec 1956. Report on the Supply of Electronic Valves and Cathode Ray Tubes
*

External links

a 1954 advertisement for Cossor radar in ''Flight'' magazine {{DEFAULTSORT:Cossor, A.C. Aircraft component manufacturers of the United Kingdom Electronics companies of the United Kingdom Electronics industry in London History of television Manufacturing companies based in London Radar manufacturers Raytheon Company Television pioneers