User:Bernafon AG/sandbox

History
The story of Bernafon hearing instruments began shortly after the Second World War, at the Gfeller company in Flamatt, Switzerland. The head of the company, Hans Gfeller, was himself severely hearing-impaired. As a result of this, Hans Gfeller’s son and one of his fellow students started building their own hearing instruments.

The first model, completed in 1946, saw the device and its battery housed in two separate leather cases. It was therefore given the name A1 2-Pack. The device was soon in demand and hearing instruments rapidly became an integral part of Gfeller’s product range.

International interest in the new hearing instruments was strong, right from the very begin-ning. By 1949, sales contracts had already been signed with customers in Italy, North Africa and the Middle East. By 1975, the instruments provided 20% of the firm’s total turnover. The most important products, however, were still telephones and telephone systems.

In 1987, the companies Autophon, Gfeller, Hasler and Zellweger were merged to form the Ascom group. The newly-created group employed a total of 14,000 workers and was ranked eleventh among the world’s largest telecommunication firms.

Under its new title Ascom Audiosys, the company was expected to perform even more successfully than before. To achieve this target, a rapid expansion was envisaged. The first big step came in 1991 when Ascom Audiosys won the contract to supply the state-run Australian Hearing Services.

A further expansion took place in 1992 with the takeover of the hearing instrument activities of the German firm Robert Bosch GmbH. The integration of Bosch’s hearing instrument activities and the simultaneous creation of a production line in Australia proved too great a challenge for the relatively small company.

As part of a new strategy determined by the Ascom group in 1993, it was decided that various activities should be offloaded, among them the production of hearing instruments. One year after that decision, the sale of Ascom Audiosys to Denmark’s William Demant group was completed.

The takeover by the William Demant group and the move into the new headquarters in Bern has brought many fundamental changes to the company – all of which are still shaping the way Bernafon goes about its daily business. An important and eye-catching signal of the new start in 1995 was the renaming of all the various divisions under the name ‘Bernafon’. Finally, after fifty years, the name Bernafon was able to connect the product, the firm behind it, and its headquarters in Bern.