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Philips

The founders of what is now one of the largest Dutch companies in history had a unique set of qualities. Father Frederik was a banker, related to Karl Marx and jewish. Het got the company going. Son Gerard had practical experience in production, but was a researcher at heart. He provided Philips with the advantage of a superior product. His inheritance is Philips' large research capacity. Son Anton was a salesman. He established the relations with clients. Together, their qualities amounted for more than the sum of their knowledge.

Philips started on Emmasingel 31 in Eindhoven, now a museum owned by Philips, showing old machinery for making lightbulbs. Those lightbulbs were Philip's first product. At the time, the most important element of competition of light bulbs was its life span. Gerard came up with a new idea: a carbonised filament made of artificial fiber was more stable and of regular quality than the filaments used by Swan in the UK and Edison in the US. Unhappy with quality of the machines used to produce light bulbs, Philips started making its own machines in 1908. The Netherlands remained neutral in the first world war. To Anton Philips, that was an opportunity. Greatest competitor Siemens & Halske and AEG were out of the running in allied countries. He vigorously expanded sales, in particular to the UK, France and Russia, where he tried to impress Stalin with his kinship to Karl Marx. Demand swelled so forcefully, that Philips could start its own gas plant (1915), glass factory (1916) and even paper and packaging factory (1919).

After the first world war, Philips started to produce radio tubes. This led to involvement in a number of consumer products (radio, television), electronics (oscilloscopes) and medical equipment (röntgen tubes). The first product unrelated to electric bulbs was an electric shaver in 1939. Eventually, this product would largely drive wet shaving off the market. Philips had became a multi-industrial concern with a focus on electrical household equipment, telecommunication and medical equipment as the second world war broke out. At that time, Anton Philips fled to the UK and later moved to the US. His son, Frits stayed behind. While Anton kept the foreign branches of Philips running, Frits juggled relations with the nazis, saving the jewish staff by claiming he needed them to keep production going. In 1943, Frits was arrested and sent to the infamous concentration camp in Vught.

Philips survived the second world war relatively unscathed, as both parties wanted the factories intact. Philips profited fully from the reconstruction, economic upswing and European integration. The turnaround came from the revival of Japan, resulting in heavy price competition. By this time, Philips was a multinational that produced largely in other countries than the Netherlands and harboured such an enormous variety of activities that it had become practically impossible to manage. The influence of the Philips family ended in 1977. In the years to follow, Philips spun off a large number of companies, including its chip-making part, now ASML. It now concentrates on electric consumer equipment and research, but medical equipment remained an important activity also. In the Netherlands, only administration and research remain. Production is to a significant degree concentrated in East Asia. Philips maintains a minority share only in Philips Lighting, an independent company producing light bulbs.

The establishments mentioned on the tokens had the following functions:

Eindhoven - Headquarters and services, including archives, library, industrial design, high tech campus (physics laboratory), company school and restaurant, health service. All production facilities now sold.

Almelo - Industrial products (sold in 1961), machinery factory (sold in 2006).

Hilversum - Philips Telecommunication Industry (PTI). Sold to AT&T, on-sold to Alcatel. Closed.

Nijmegen - semi-conductors. Spun off as NXP Semiconductors. Light bulb plant Splendor, closed in 1991.

Stadskanaal - television tubes, semi-conductors. Closed in 2006.

Winschoten - television tubes. Assigned to semi independent Philips Lighting and now producing specialty glass.

Philips daughters

Until 1930, the best known remedy against rickets (known as English disease in the Netherlands), a deficiency of vitamin D, was cod liver oil. Due to its bad taste, parents had a hard time feeding cod livr oil to their children. Two Dutch researches found the mechanics with which tanning lamps produced vitamin D in humans. This enabled them to produce vitamin D chemically. They partnered with chocolate producer Van Houten to make a vitamin D rich variety of chocolate that could replace cod liver oil. Philips was interested. In 1930, a dedicated factory in Weesp, called Philips-van Houten started production. In 1936, Van Houten withdrew its participation. Philips acquired a pharmaceutical producer in 1942 and expanded into chemicals. In 1959, the two assets were merged into Philips-Duphar. The latter part is a portmanteau name for Dutch Pharmaceuticals. It was this company that developed Agent Orange, a controversial herbicide used by the US army in the Vietnam war. Philips Duphar was sold to Belgian chemical company Solvay. Solvay was taken over by a US company, Abbott, who closed the research part of what used to be Philips Duphar.

The origin of a branch plant in Dordrecht was Dordtsche Metaalindustrie Johan de Witt. The factory was acquired by Philips in 1939. It was spun off in 1997 as Mechatronics B.V. At present, it is called Premotec (Precision Motor Technology).

Volt was a company producing lightbulbs in Tilburg. It was established in 1909 by a group of merchants. Its strength was that it held a patent on the Lelios technology, which used Tungsten in light bulbs. Though Volt suffered losses in the first world war, demand increased. In 1919, Philips provided capital for expansion and reconstruction. By 1925, Volt was effectively part of Philips. The crash of 1929 and its aftermath and damage in the second world war hollowed out Volt. The rebuilt Volt plant produced mainstream Philips equipment, such as shavers and televisions. The Volt plants were reduced in capacity and closed one by one. The last parts closed in 1999. The logo of the company, the Volt spark can be seen on the token. Since 2002, it figures as a decorative item on Transvaalplein in Tilburg.

Philips web site

Premotec web site

Catalogue