The General Radio Company manufactured a broad line of electronic test equipment from 1915 to 2001. During the middle of 20th century, they were a major competitor to Hewlett-Packard and Tektronix. The General Radio monthly journal, Experimenter, brought news of new products and measurement techniques to an audience of more than 100,000 readers between 1926 and 1974. In 1975 the company name was changed to GenRad and it was later purchased by IET Labs.
They had a good reputation for quality products. They were known for: the introduction of one of the world's first portable oscilloscopes; the production of many high-precision instruments for inductance, resistance, and capacitance standards; the production of the stroboscope called the Strobotac; the production of a sound level meter; the Variac variable autotransformer, which was a U.S. trademark of General Radio from 1934 to 2001; the Invention of the "five-way" binding post connector; and the invention of the GR connector.