Consolidated Electronic Industries
Consolidated Electronic Industries (CEI) produced professional tape cartridge machines
from the early 1960's. The Whitlem Government in 1974 decided to cut trarrifs on electronic
components and equipment so that everyone could have cheap colour TVs. This unfortunately
was a change that was made without giving the industry time to adapt and could have killed
the electronics industry in this country. The big companies including Plessey ceased to
produce components here and imported them instead. Plessey
Electronics also decided to get out of tape recorder manufacture in the mid 1970's,
CEI took over the production of the "77" series machines. A major change was the release
of the "77" Mk IV which was the first time transistorised circuitry was used in the "77"
series. At about this time some of the people from Plessey who didn't make the move to CEI
formed a new company called Optronics.
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