General Radio

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General Radio Corporation (later, GenRad) was a broad-line manufacturer of electronic test equipment. Started in Boston, Massachusetts, the company eventually moved to West Concord. There, it became a major player in the automatic test equipment business, manufacturing a line of testers for assembled printed circuit boards.

Primarily because of its line of ATE equipment, the company was eventually acquired by Teradyne and has now been relocated to Teradyne's corporate campus in North Reading, Massachusetts.

Among General Radio's accomplishments over the years have been:

• The introduction of one of the world's first portable oscilloscopes
• The production of many high-precision standards for resistance and capacitance
• The commercial production of the stroboscope as the Strobotach
• The commercial production of the sound level meter
• Invention of the GR connector
• The Variac variable autotransformer