In article ,
Tony Bryer writes:
On 16 Nov 2008 14:24:21 GMT Andrew Gabriel wrote :
GEC's lighting division was GEC Osram, but was sold back to the
Germans (from which it had been obtained after WWII)

WW1 - see http://www.twickenhamurc.org.uk/whoswho.htm , bottom of
page. I bought a copy of The GEC Research Laboratories 1919-84 a
while back (it's on a ship somewhere between the UK and
Australia) and a very interesting read it is too.

It's more complicated than that, and I must confess I don't
understand one of the bits. Osram seems to have started up
independantly in both England and in Germany around the turn
of the century, and I've never seen anything which says what
the relationship between these two bits was. Any mention I
find of one part at that time completely fails to say
anything about the other part. The English bit became GEC
around WWI, but the German bit which was owned by Siemens
merged into GEC after WWII (I presume as part of the war
reparations, but I've never seen that explicitly stated).
The whole lot was sold back to Siemens sometime around the
late 1980's (I recall we could suddenly no longer get
GEC Osram bulbs on staff discount;-).

--
Andrew Gabriel
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