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Founded in 1926 by Guy R. Fountain in London as the Tulsemere Manufacturing Company, Tannoya portmanteau (footnote 1) of "tantalum" and "alloy," after a tantalum-lead alloy used in rectifierstook on its current commercial identity in 1928. Through the war years and beyond, the company specialized in public-address (PA) systems. Indeed, today, "tannoy" is a widely recognized generic term for a PA system in the UK; there's an entry for "tannoy" in the Oxford English Dictionary.