The N.Z. Vintage Radio Project

The Press, 29th April 1933

Directors, Norman Laugesen and William Toon

Note: originally the directors were Emily Laugesen (Normans Wife) and William Toon - this is likely because Norman was still in the NZ Police and was either unwilling or unable to be the director of a public company.

William Toon was a trained electrical engineer (who was at college with Preston Billing, of Preston B. Billing Ltd in Wellington - one of several Billing brothers in the radio trade there).  He had previously been the Christchurch agent for the Philadelphia Battery Company (The predecessor company to Philco).  It seems that this new company absorbed the old one and continued to also sell batteries.

Norman Laugesen was a police detective and self-trained ham (at one time the president of the NZART) who built his own gear and in the first three years logged 1500 or more two-way communications.  He was, in 1933, awarded a licence to investigate television transmissions from the Post & Telegraph dept.  In that same year he left the NZ Police to take up a directorship of the NZ Radio Mfg Co. Ltd.  He joined the NZ expeditionary forces in WW2 and was sadly killed in action in Egypt in 1942.