Rogers International Ltd

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Rogers is a British brand name of Rogers International Ltd, a subsidiary of Wo Kee Hong Holdings Ltd, a Chinese company based in Hong Kong that produces a variety of audio electronic products.

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[edit] Description

The company produces a variety of hi-fi products, such as amplifiers, receivers, car audio equipment and LCD TVs, but is best known for its loudspeakers.

[edit] History

Rogers was originally founded by Jim Rogers in 1947. Jim Rogers was an engineer in the research department of the British Broadcasting Corporation or BBC[1], and had pioneered the use of Bextrene in speaker cone design.

An early example of a Rogers speaker was the Theatrical Horn Loudspeaker which proved to be both commercially and acoustically successful and established Rogers as a reliable and innovative manufacturer of quality equipment.

Since 1947, the company had gone through many changes. In the late 1970s Rogers was bought out by Michael O'Brien of Swisstone Electronics, who also owned the Chartwell brand of speakers, and handled distribution of Luxman products in the UK in the early 1990s.

In 1993 the brand was sold off to its new Chinese owners Wo Kee Hong Holdings, who had since developed the Rogers brand to include surround sound speakers, car audio equipment, Dolby Digital receivers and plasma and LCD TV screens. Although Wo Kee Hong owns the rights to the name, it had retained Swisstone as the sole researcher and designers of the Rogers speakers, therefore preserving the brand's British origins for a while[2]. In 1998 as a result of a dramatic downturn in its Asian exports, the company closed the last of its UK manufacturing sites, and moved all production to Asia[3], where it has resided since.

[edit] Notable Products

LS3/5A In the early 1970s, the BBC was in need of a small monitor speaker for use in restricted areas outside broadcast vans during location recording. To that end, they commissioned their design team BBC Engineering to develop such a compact speaker that would fit that working environment. The outcome was the LS3/5a which was then licensed to commercial speaker companies for production. Aside from Rogers, other manufacturers licensed by the BBC to produce the LS3/5a were Chartwell, Audiomaster, Spendor, and Harbeth. The LS3/5A was Rogers most successful speaker, and to date 50,000 pairs have been built worldwide.

LS 5/8 and 5/9 These Grade One Studio speakers are exclusive Rogers/BBC designs, and has been accepted as a standard in many recording studios.

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ BBC LS3/5a Audio Shopper review (2007). Retrieved on 2007-03-15.
  2. ^ BBC LS3/5a Stereophile speaker review (2007). Retrieved on 2007-03-15.
  3. ^ Mordaunt-Short, Epos, Rogers to close UK manufacturing (2007). Retrieved on 2007-03-15.
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