You're familiar with Polaroid and Bell+Howell? How about RCA?
Familiar with the brand names, but not the companies behind them. Following its bankruptcy, Polaroid was bought by an investment firm, who now rents the brand name to anonymous manufacturers. For example, the new Polaroid x530 digital camera is manufactured by World Wide Licenses.
Bell+Howell made the slide projector my dad bought in the 1950s, and that I still own. Today, however, the Bell+Howell name is owned by Bowe. As they explain at their Web site:
"Since 1992, BÖWE Bell + Howell has been partnering with a virtual "who's who" of the consumer electronics products world, licensing the Bell & Howell trademark on a host of electronic and optics products. Zenith, JVC, Sharp, Sanyo, Matsushita and Phillips have produced products carrying the familiar Bell & Howell brand name."
Other products with the Bell+Howell trademark include digital cameras, sunlight floor lamps, alarm systems, Sonic Earz, and Bio7 Pain Therapist.
Same for RCA, perhaps the best known name in electronics in the mid-20th century in North America. The Radio Corporation of America no longer is; instead, it is a brand name ownd by Thompson Electronics of France. Appliances with the brand name "GE" are manufactured by Cramco -- not General Electric.
I suppose I could go on and on. After all, HP and Toshiba and Dell don't make any notebook computers; a cabal of notebook manufacturers in Taiwan take care of all that. The difference is that at least companies by the name of HP and GE still exist. The Bell+Howells and RCAs don't.
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