18 Facts About Zenith Electronics

Zenith Electronics, LLC, is an American research and development company that develops ATSC and digital rights management technologies.

Zenith Electronics was the inventor of subscription television and the modern remote control, and was the first to develop high-definition television in North America.

Zenith Electronics-branded products were sold in North America, Germany, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, India, and Myanmar.

The name "Zenith Electronics" came from ZN'th, a contraction of its founders' ham radio call sign, 9ZN.

Zenith Electronics introduced the first portable radio in 1924, the first mass-produced AC radio in 1926, and push-button tuning in 1927.

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The first Zenith Electronics television set appeared in 1939, with its first commercial sets sold to the public in 1948.

Zenith Electronics is credited with having invented such things as the wireless remote control and FM multiplex stereo.

For many years Zenith Electronics used the slogan "the quality goes in before the name goes on".

Concerned about losing market share to Japanese companies, Zenith Electronics filed suit in federal court in Philadelphia in 1974 against the major Japanese television and electronic manufacturers charging violation of the United States Antitrust Laws and the Anti-Dumping Act of 1916.

Zenith Electronics joined two United States companies Sears, Roebuck and Co.

In 1979, Zenith Electronics entered the computer market with the purchase of Heath Company from Schlumberger for $64.

Zenith Electronics changed its name to Zenith Electronics Corporation in 1984, to reflect its interests in computers and CATV, and since it had left the radio business two years earlier.

Zenith Electronics filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1999, and in exchange for its debts, LG bought the remaining 45 percent of the company.

LG offered some Zenith Electronics branded plasma, LCD, and direct view televisions through selected retail outlets.

Zenith Electronics was the first company to experiment with subscription television, launching their Phonevision system with experimental Chicago station KS2XBS.

Zenith Electronics is, perhaps, best known for the first practical wireless television remote control, the Space Command, developed in 1956.

Zenith Electronics kept circuit boards out of their televisions until the Chromacolor line of the early 1970s, and even then used them only with solid state components, mounting the four tubes used in the Chromacolor "4 tube hybrid" on the steel chassis.

Zenith Electronics began using circuit boards in radios when they converted to solid-state in the late 1960s, but even Zenith Electronics's early transistor radios were completely hand wired with socketed transistors.