Harman Kardon (stylized as ) is a division of US-based Harman International Industries, a subsidiary of Samsung Electronics, and manufactures home and car audio equipment. Harman Kardon was originally founded in 1953 by business partners, Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon. History In the early 1950s, Sidney Harman was the general manager of the David Bogen Company, a manufacturer of public address systems at the time. Bernard Kardon (January 8, 1914 – April 14, 1993 in New Rochelle) was the chief engineer at Bogen. Due to management changes at Bogen in the early 1950s, both men resigned. With $5,000 investment each, Sidney Harman and Bernard Kardon founded the Harman Kardon Company in 1953. In the 1950s Harman Kardon designed some of the first high fidelity audio products that initiated the modern consumer high fidelity business. The company's first product was an FM tuner. The integrated receivers (with a tuner, preamplifier and power amplifier) was an attempt to create, improve and produce high fidelity performance in a single unit. Integrated receivers were not a novel concept as Scott Radio Laboratories had manufactured such items in the late 1930s. One year after its founding, in 1954, Harman Kardon introduced their first compact size high fidelity receiver, the Festival D1000. The D1000 was one of the world's first AM/FM compact Hi-Fi receivers, and a forerunner to today's integrated receivers. This monaural unit was aimed to introduce non-technical consumers to high fidelity and combined many now-familiar features such as a tuner, component control unit and amplifier in a single chassis. The shape, form function and size of the D1000 was a forerunner of the modern integrated receiver. Early Harman Kardon Hi-Fi equipment can be identified by a distinctive design of a copper plated chassis with a copper and black color scheme for panels and enclosures. By 1956, Bernard Kardon decided to retire and sold his interest in the company to Sidney Harman. As the sole head of Harman Kardon, Harman continued to make the company a technical leader in Hi-Fi products. Sidney Harman would change the company's name to Harman International, but the receivers, tuners and amplifiers were still branded Harman Kardon. These products continue to be branded as Harman Kardon. In 1958, Harman Kardon introduced one of the first stereo receivers, the Festival TA230, once again aimed at non-technical users with the intention of making high-fidelity stereo widely available. Stereo sound was achieved by