Telefunken was the electronic leg of AEG, original formed as "German Edison". They build everything from full blown atomic power plants to micro chips, etc.
NASA bought all wave traveling tubes and other specialty equipment there, as well IBM was Telefunken biggest customer for micro chips, tubes, etc. up to 1975.
They were nose to nose in patents and R&D with Philips up to 1975, but than something happened that year that took the entire company and surroundings into a spiral, that ended up to the liquidation in the mid 80s...
Today there is nothing left of the original company..
Telefunken build 90% of their products in their own factories that were located all over the world. Some products were developed at the R&D lab and than sourced out.
There are several different stories about the microphones, for sure I know from talks to a former designer at Telefunken that the 250/251 was developed at Telefunken around AKGs CK12 capsule.
U47? there are several open questions, but Telefunken owned 25% of Neumann Berlin; at some points in time they also had shares in AKG...
Today not to much stuff is known by the general public, but the tape machine, the sound on film, the first condenser mic(before George Neumann), the first high vacuum tube, the first TV (and color TV), the first missile guidance system, the first picture disk (about 20 years before the standard DVD) the first fax machine, etc, etc, etc... were developed by Telefunken as well as build! Here again, to much info for such a short platform...
As far as I know ( I frequently have to rewind 50 year plus output devices) there is a cult around the Telefunken V44 and V1xx power amps, either build with F2A11, EL112, EL150 and EL156..
I own several Telefunken made home stereo systems, both tube (several V101 power amps) and transistor as well as many other "Telefunken made in Western Germany" items.... would not trade them for the world...
From 1928 to 1939 Telefunken researched and developed many experimental electronic music instruments like the Trautonium and even build several production Theremins (not developed by Telefunken), they also developed and build the first electronic vocoder, as well as many other psychedelic music instruments, that would showed up in popular music in the 1960s... Way to much info to digest and talk about in one month...
A paragraph about my life?
I summed it up in the "This month" post...
But as other boys my age were into "Fussball" or soccer, I was into electronics, and collecting any book, magazine etc... After I did an education in a none electronic field to please my Dad, I finally got my electronic degree with 21.....
I guess being at the right time, in the right place, doing the right thing, is the best way to point it out. While Daimler Benz was dissolving AEG-Telefunken, several volumes of Telefunken R&D data were thrown in the dumpster, after I asked my manager if I could take it home, he said, take the old crap and get happy... So I did, get happy I mean...
Since about 25 years I am talking with retired electronic engineers, form several german electronic companies to save as much info on x-former, tubes, and related field, hunting down and collecting old books, magazines and lots of the old machinery... Once in a while I get lucky finding left over blue prints...
That is about the short version.... But this should be enough said about me...
Best regards,
Oliver