Fortiphone Ltd 1929

occupation:
Manufacturer
Nationality:
British
born in:
London, Greater London, England, United Kingdom

Fortiphone was active in the 20th century and were manufacturers of hearing aids to help veterans following the First World War and beyond. They focused on innovative designs for their hearing instruments and later diversfied their products to include other aids such as aid-to-speech devices.

While developing miniature microphones for their hearing aids, they also developed a range of miniature chokes and transformers to reduce the size and weight of their amplifiers. These attracted the attention of the Dutch Radar Laboratory (NRP) in 1954 who secured a contract with the CIA to develop the Fortiphone devices as covert listening bugs. Fortiphone components were used for this purpose for the following years, but little more is known about the company from this point on.