100 voltageciting TRAMAG Years – From 1923 to Today
Episode 3: Re-start for Hans Magnus, business handed over to Karl Ammon and Transformers for the Americans stationed in Germany
Join us on a highly interesting journey through the formative events of 100 years of TRAMAG corporate history.
After the end of the war in 1945, Hans Magnus gets his company back. However, the former TRAMAG buildings on the Galgenhof are completely destroyed and so he ventures a new start in Wiesentalstraße near Nuremberg’s Westbad.
However, Hans Magnus does not live to see the great economic miracle; he dies on 17th October 1949. Karl Ammon, a long-time TRAMAG employee, takes over the management, while Gert Magnus, Hans Magnus’ son, remains a silent partner in the company. In accordance with the new situation, the company is renamed “Transformatoren Ammon & Magnus OHG”. The company abbreviation TRAMAG is also retained.
The economic upswing in post-war Germany brought Karl Ammon the return of customers from the model railway sector from 1949 onwards and a major order from the American military administration. The arrival of the American soldiers and their families initially caused a problem, because the American power grid oper-ates at a voltage of 110 volts, whereas in Europe a voltage of 220 volts is used. Accordingly, all American appliances needed corresponding transformers to be able to be used in Germany. These widely known mobile transformers in robust grey sheet metal housings were manufactured by TRAMAG for decades.
From the boom of the economic miracle to the pioneer of the transformer industry
In the years that followed, TRAMAG was riding the wave of the German economic miracle and was able to increase its turnover almost tenfold to 1.5 million Deutsch-marks between 1949 and 1954. Even then, TRAMAG was regarded as a specia-list for special types and custom-made products, but with the new range of the B 54 single-phase neon tube bake-out transformer in 1955, Karl Ammon now also started series production. Between 1954 and 1968, the company boss repeatedly tries to find new business fields and trends in order to expand the transformer variety with new customers in emerging industrial sectors.
Next week, in episode 4 of our exciting web news series, you will find out how the TRAMAG company history continues.