A Potted History:
Our founder, Charles King, is nearly 80 now – and an invaluable source of technical knowledge; his experience in the electronic industry goes back a long way:
1950s:
Charles served the audio and radio industry and helped popularise TV, whilst paying lip service to the electric guitar music industry through companies like WEM. Goodmans was one of a number of loudspeaker companies who rushed to service the new demands of high fidelity.
1960s:
Saw Charles involved in the improvement of fluorescent lighting circuitry
1970s:
Started as ‘the’ time of Heart-rate pacemakers.
Near the end of the 70s Charles made the brave step of going out on his own, having seen a new opportunity as the first ultrasonic security devices were developed. On 4th May 1979 Chartland Electronics Ltd was born.
1980s:
Rosetta King (Charles’s wife) and Jan King (daughter) join the business.
Chartland ‘rang bells’ with the Disney telephones.
We fed clock crystals, 32 & 40kHz ultrasonics to security industry.
Chartland became the first world manufacturer of commercially available plastic, flat, PIR lenses – our CE01, CE12, CE24,CE26 & CE28 lenses were exported all over the world.
1990s:
Saw the explosion of the PIR market in the UK; Chartland led the way with pyrosensors (now much further developed and drastically down from an original price of £40 each!).
We sold 80k photocells a month into the street lighting industry.
Our ‘V3’ type switches protected a million bell boxes.
Speech units came alive – although were quickly overtaken by our front end PIR modules!
So, here we are in 2009 and we are celebrating our 30th Anniversary. Charles & Jan have been joined by Jan’s son, Ryan, helping to keep it all ‘in the family’.
Everything we sell continues to be of the best/highest standard and quality: Pyrosensors, Front-end PIR Modules, Lens, Photocells, Light Sensors, Microswitches and - TO MEET MODERN DEMANDS – OUR NEW CO2 Sensor.