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Ekco

Ekco produced some of the most collectable vintage wireless receivers from the classic years of radio design. Classicwireless.co.uk concentrates on Murphy, but because of the importance of Ekco I have many examples of their receivers in my collection. Pictured below are group photographs of some of the Ekco receivers featured in the following 18 pages.

The name Ekco derives from the company founder’s name: Eric Kirkham Cole. He had started hand-making valve radios in the mid 1920’s for local customers, and within a year or so noticed a gap in the market for battery eliminators that allowed battery receivers to be operated from the mains. At first his converters were only suitable for DC mains, but as it was becoming obvious that AC mains was to be the future of domestic power his converters later incorporated rectification so that the market appeal of his product was maintained. Eric Kirkham Cole formed a private company in 1926, and a year later large-scale production of eliminators commenced at Leigh-On-Sea. However, towards the end of the 1920’s radio manufacturer’s were increasingly building receivers that could be operated directly from the mains, so if Cole was to continue to build his business he had to develop other products to manufacture. The obvious area to diversify into was radio production itself, as the brand name of Ekco would already be associated with radio in the minds of many customers who had bought Ekco battery eliminators.

In 1930 Ekco had a purpose-built factory constructed for them at Prittlewell, a green-field site about a mile inland from Southend-On-Sea. This new factory provided the modern facilities where large-scale production of radio receivers could commence from, and the site continued to be used by Ekco (and subsequent owners of the brand name) until the 1970s.

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