FERGUSON MOD. 38030 YEAR 1986

The FERGUSON  Mod.  38030  is a portable 12 inches B/W Screen with ONLY UHF Channels reception capability.

Marketed with the FERGUSON Brand It's made by Thorn EMI.

THORN'S new 12in. monochrome portables, Models 38020 and 38030, have been designed to sell at a suggested retail price in 1985 of just £49.95. They are fitted with a new chassis and are being produced at Thorn's Gosport  TV plant. This is good news indeed, since it shows that the UK's TV industry can produce and sell sets in even the  most competitive section of the market. To make this possible, the sets have a minimal component count and a  mechanical construction of extreme simplicity. They weight just 131b and have a consumption of typically 1A. Fea-  tures include rotary electronic tuning, an earphone socket and a foldaway loop aerial.     

Was fitted with a monocarrier chassis featured with a Monomax i.c. is where the novel circuit features are to be found, so most of our article will be devoted to this. The i.c. incorporates 200 linear devices, 200 gates, one million ohms of resistance and 120pF of capacitance on a 12,700 square mil chip. To make this possible and to reduce the dissipation, the i.c. is operated at 8V instead of the usual 11-12V. This enables the area occupied by the minimum size transistor to be reduced by 30 per cent, giving an overall 15 per cent reduction in the chip size. A further key aspect is the inclusion of a nitride step in the process of chip fabrication. This provides reliable junction seals and enables stable capacitors with three times the values possible with normal oxide films to be incorporated. The i.c. dissipates less than 500mW.

Ferguson Electronics (formerly known as Ferguson Radio Corporation) is an electronics company specializing in small electronics items such as radios and set top boxes.

History

Ferguson is one of the older electronics companies, alongside Ultra, Dynatron, Pye and Bush radio in the United Kingdom. It was originally an American–Canadian pre-War company making radio sets for the U.K. market based upon contemporary American models. After World War II, it became Ferguson Radio Corporation, making radio receivers and, later, televisions. Later still, it became part of the British Radio Corporation. It was taken over by THORN Electrical Industries in the late 1950s, but the Ferguson name continued to be used by Thorn, and its successor Thorn EMI.
Throughout the company's early history, Ferguson products were very popular across its wide customer base. By the early 1960s its wide product range included a most comprehensive range of audio and TV equipment. Small, battery-operated portable transistor radios to solid oak 6 ft wide hydraulic lid radiograms sporting fully automatic stackable Garrard turntables, multi-channel radios and 2-foot-wide stereo speakers were commonplace in many UK households. Open reel tape recorders and hi-fis followed.
Sales held well, with 1980s new introductions including personal cassette players, CD players and video recorders.
The 1980s saw much competition from foreign brands such as JVC, Tandy, Hitachi and Sanyo. Even High Street electrical outlets such as Dixons and Currys introduced own brands manufactured in the far East, such as Saisho and Matsui. This took its toll on the Ferguson brand and during the late 1980s, it was sold off to the French electronics company Thomson. Thomson itself subsequently withdrew from the competitive European consumer electronics market. The Ferguson brand was licensed initially to DSI (Dixons and Currys). DSI ceased using it in 2006 and competitor Comet took up the licence.
The 2000s have seen the introduction of Ferguson branded Freeview set-top boxes, DVD players and recorders and DAB radios.

Today

The Ferguson brand is used by Comet on a range of DAB digital radios as well as Freeview set top boxes and a range of other electronics items.

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Thorn EMI was a major British company involved in consumer electronics, music, defence and retail. Created in October 1979 when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI, it was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index but it demerged again in 1996.

History

The Company was formed in October 1979 when Thorn Electrical Industries merged with EMI.
In May 1984 the Company attempted to merge with British Aerospace and in July 1984 it bought the micro-chip manufacturer, INMOS.
Thorn EMI acquired the Mullard Equipment Limited ('MEL') division of Philips in 1990.
On 16 August 1996, Thorn EMI shareholders voted in favour of demerging Thorn from EMI again: the Company became EMI Group plc, and the electronics and rentals divisions were divested as Thorn plc.

Thorn EMI's wide range of business covered five principal areas of activity; television broadcasting, retail/rentals, defence, music and consumer electronics.

Television broadcasting

Thorn EMI was, until a share flotation in 1984, the majority shareholder in the London-based ITV broadcaster Thames Television.
This shareholding was inherited from the 1967 purchase of the Associated British Picture Corporation by EMI. The deal included their interests in the ITV company ABC Weekend Television. Through an enforced merger with Rediffusion London, this became Thames.
In 1985 the company attempted to sell their stake to Carlton Communications but this was blocked by the governing body of ITV, the Independent Broadcasting Authority.

Retail and rental

Radio Rentals, DER and Rumbelows (which was sold in 1995) Rent-A-Center

Defence

From its formation until the mid-1990s Thorn EMI was one of the United Kingdom's largest defence companies.
The MEL Division, acquired from Philips, was involved in radar, electronic warfare and communications. The MEL communications business was sold to Thomson-CSF, now Thales.
In 1995 the various defence businesses were sold:

• Thorn EMI Electro Optics to Pilkington Optronics
• Thomson Thorn Missile Electronics to Thomson-CSF, now Thales
• Thorn Sensors Group to Racal (to become Racal-Thorn Wells, now also part of Thales)

Music

The EMI label expanded greatly as part of Thorn EMI. In 1989 Thorn EMI bought a 50% interest in Chrysalis Records, buying the outstanding 50% in 1991. In one of its highest-profile and most expensive acquisitions, Thorn EMI took over Richard Branson's Virgin Records in 1992.

Computer Software

Main article: Creative Sparks

In the early-to-mid 1980s, Thorn EMI Video Programmes released a number of games for several home computer formats, initially under their own name. They received a lukewarm reception with no major hits (though Snooker and Billiards did reach No. 6 in the UK Atari Charts). These included Snooker and Billiards, 8-Ball and Tournament Pool, Darts, Cribbage and Dominoes (1981) Gold Rush, Mutant Herd, Road Racer and Volcanic Planet (1983) and River Rescue (1982). The label was later renamed Creative Sparks.
From 1981 till about 1983, Thorn EMI Video Programmes was based in the Thorn EMI head office near Seven Dials in central London. They moved from there to an office in Soho and the name changed to just Thorn EMI Video. TEV later became Creative Sparks.

Security Systems

Thorn Security installed and serviced all types of electronic security systems from their bases around the UK. The business was absorbed into ADT soon after the EMI demerger and all but a handful of the famous red 'THORN' bellboxes replaced. However, the Fire products especially are still to be found in many premises and until recently spares and complete systems of Thorn heritage continued to be manufactured by ADT.

Business Communications

This division, based in Marlow provided hotels with televisions and related equipment. It also embarked upon a project called Hotel 3000 which provided interactive Set-Top-Boxes for hotel rooms in the late 1980s.
After Thorn's demerger, this division started operating as Quadriga

Advanced Product Development Centre

This small subsidiary further developed existing products as well as introducing new ones. It was based in St.Lawrence House, Broad Street, Bristol.

Consumer electronics

Ferguson Radio Corporation was owned by Thorn EMI and it made consumer electronics like TV sets, VCRs, etc. TVs were designed and manufactured by Ferguson in the UK until around the early 1990s, although before this, some Thomson-designed models were introduced to the Fergsuon range of TVs for sale in the UK. Some of these Thomson-based models were even manufactured in the UK, although in later years, these models were made outside the UK by Thomson.
By 1992, the Ferguson TV factory in Gosport had closed, ending a long period of manufacturing of Ferguson TVs in the UK.
VCRs were sourced until the early 1990s by a joint company called J2T, established by JVC, Thorn (Ferguson) and Telefunken. From around 1991, VCRs were sourced from Thomson alone.
One important aspect of Thorn EMI’s business was its ability to manufacture, say, one of its Ferguson televisions and then to make it available for rental through its rentals sector or sell it through its retail sector.
Prism Micro Products was owned by Thorn EMI for a short period in the 1980s.

Domestic appliances

Kenwood Limited: The company is now owned by DeLonghi.

Thorn EMI Video

Thorn EMI Video was established in 1977 and produced three made for video films for the British market: Cross Country (film) (1983), and Strange Invaders (1984) and Bloodbath at the House of Death (1984). Thorn EMI became popular with rental stores. In the U.S., Thorn EMI released films on video from various film companies including Orion Pictures (The Terminator, First Blood) and New Line Cinema (The Evil Dead, Xtro), and Universal (Bad Boys and Frances) in the 1980s.
Thorn EMI joined HBO in 1985 to be named Thorn EMI HBO Video. In 1986, Cannon films bought Thorn EMI's video library, but HBO stayed and became HBO/Cannon Video. Cannon left operations and was eventually just called HBO Video in 1987.

After Demerger

Thorn was purchased by Nomura Principal Finance Group in 1998, which subsequently became Terra Firma Capital Partners. It disposed of Thorn in 2007 to a private buyer.

References

Strange, R. (2002). Japanese Manufacturing Investment in Europe: Its Impact on the UK Economy. Taylor & Francis. p. 303. ISBN 9780203036976. Retrieved 2015-08-25.

"Intellectual Property Office - GOV.UK". ipo.gov.uk. Retrieved 2015-08-25.