Lafayette Radio - History

History

Established in the 1920s, Lafayette Radio Electronics (LRE) became a thriving mail-order catalog business; the electronic components it sold were useful to amateur radio operators and electronic hobbyists in areas where such components were not available in local retail outlets. Lafayette's main competitors were Radio Shack, Allied Radio, Heathkit, and "mom and pop" (independent) radio dealers throughout the United States. Early Lafayette Radio stores were located in Jamaica, N.Y. and Manhattan in the mid-1950s. The electronics kits were produced in the Jamaica facility.

Lafayette advertised heavily in major U.S. consumer electronics magazines of the 1960s and 1970s, particularly Stereo Review, High Fidelity, Audio, Popular Mechanics, and Popular Electronics, among others. The company offered a free 400-page catalog filled with descriptions of vast quantities of electronic gear, including microphones, tape recorders, speakers, and other components that could be obtained for free by mailing in a coupon.

Read more about this topic:  Lafayette Radio

Famous quotes containing the word history:

    Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    ... all big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.
    Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)

    There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.
    Karl Marx (1818–1883)