We celebrate 50 years of Elinchrom.

Elinchrom 26.01.1962 — 2012 …What a name is worth :

We celebrate 50 years of Elinchrom.

Everything started for us in the 1960’s. Gerry Demieville, the Swiss founder of Elinca S.A, had his own electrical company in Venezuela. Early 1960 the Venezuelan economy ran into a brick wall and Gerry returned to Switzerland. He became interested in Electronic flash and after obtaining some experience, Gerry formed Elinca S.A as a flash manufacturing company in January 1962.

In 1963 Elinchrom released a 300 kg power pack with 10’000 ws. Quite a heavy start : Capacitors were oil filled with voltages high enough to kill the user. Weights were reduced, but quite soon 360v lightweight capacitors were introduced to make the system more user friendly.

With designers such as Claude Tinguely and Roger Durand, “cutting edge” innovations were made – always with the handicap of high Swiss production costs.

Gerry died in September 1985 and Malcolm D. Whittle took over the company. Malcolm came from the UK and was Elinchrom’s top agent in the world. The first innovation under Malcolm’s direction was the EL-500 – over 70.000 units would be sold wordwide. The family, including EL-250 and EL 1000 would lift this total to almost 120.000.

Our Team, that has grown over the years, has made Elinchrom into a world brand and trendsetter in lighting technologies.

We try to remain close to our roots – to look at and anticipate the evolution of user needs. We look forward to making new friends – and will continue to support our existing users and friends. You have given us your confidence for 50 years. We will honour your trust.

Thank you.