Dr. Sidney Harman (1918-2011) and Bernard Kardon founded Harman Kardon in 1953.
Address in 1959: Harman-Kardon, Inc., 520 Main St., Westbury, Long Island, N. Y.

He sold the company to Beatrice Foods, bought it back when it wasn't run well enough for his taste and sold it again, building his fortune. In 1958, Harman Kardon introduced the world's first stereo receiver, the Festival TA230. Stereo sound was achieved by using one channel from the AM band, and one channel from the FM band.

Wikipedia April 2011: <i>"In the late 1970s, the Harman Kardon Citation XX power amplifier was called "the world's best-sounding power amplifier" by the editors of The Audio Critic, a magazine published in the USA. The amplifier was designed by Dr. Matti Otala who discovered Transient Intermodulation Distortion (TIM) in 1970 and worked to mitigate its effects in the following years. The Citation XX was an at-any-cost project with the single goal of the best possible measurements of output signal, and the best perceived sound. The Harman Kardon iSub 2000 Subwoofer and SoundSticks were originally introduced at the July 2000 Apple Computer Worldwide Developers Conference.

Harman Kardon partnered with Apple to design and manufacture the Harman Kardon iSub 2000 Subwoofer and SoundSticks. Apple did the industrial design and mechanical engineering with the goal of having the product look like part of the Apple product family. This product won an Industrial Design Excellence Awards gold award and was featured on the cover of I.D. magazine. The SoundSticks II were a minor upgrade, with the addition of capacitive volume control buttons and a 3.5mm mini-jack input replacing the previous USB input."</i>

Today: Harman Consumer Systems Group (HCSG) in Harman International include the following brands:<br>AKG <br>Audioaccess <br>Becker <br>BSS <br>Crown <br>dbx <br>Digi Tech <br>Harman Kardon <br>Infinity <br>JBL (Consumer) <br>JBL (Professional) <br>Lexicon (Consumer) <br>Lexicon (Professional) <br>Mark Levinson <br>QNX <br>Revel <br>Soundcraft <br>Studer.