Philips Research

Philips Research, historically the Philips Natuurkundig Laboratorium or NatLab, was the Dutch section of the research department of the electronics company Philips. It was founded in 1914 after a decision by Gerard and Anton Philips, who hired the physicist Gilles Holst as its first director, to support product development, build a patent portfolio and reduce the company's dependence on patents held by others. It stood first in the Strijp district of Eindhoven and moved to Waalre in the early 1960s, and at its peak it employed some 2,400 people. Researchers there included Balthasar van der Pol and Bernard Tellegen, who invented the pentode with Holst in 1926, and its work produced the compact cassette in 1962, the Plumbicon camera tube and the Video Long Play disc that was the technological basis of the compact disc. Kees Schouhamer Immink devised the eight to fourteen modulation of the compact disc there. After 2000 the grounds became the High Tech Campus Eindhoven, where Philips Research remains one tenant among many.