Regency Electronics Inc.

founded 1945

BiographyRegency Electronics Inc. was founded in 1945 by former RCA employees Joe Weaver and John Piers in Indianapolis, Indiana as I.D.E.A., Industrial Development Engineering Associates. Through the 1940s and 1950s the company moved from competing directly in the radio and TV business, to focusing on specialty products that derived from these markets, such as UHF police radio, signal and voltage boosters, and famously, the first commercialized transistor radio in the world in collaboration with Texas Instruments, the Regency TR-1 of 1954.

The innovative product's sucess led to many other companies entering the field, and competition from Japan, which Regency claimed infringed on Regency and TI intellectual property, made Regency uncompetitive in the radio business in the 1960s, from which it withdrew.

I.D.E.A. formally changed its name to Regency in 1961.

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For more information, see "Regency's Development of the TR-1 Transistor Radio," Regency, http://www.regencytr1.com/Regency_Early_Years.html (accessed 06/22/2015)