Oregon Scientific, Inc. is a manufacturer of electronic products including digital clocks, home weather stations, public alert monitors, fitness devices, toys, and globes, The firm was started in 1989 in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populou ...

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

. In 1997, the company became a fully owned subsidiary of IDT (Integrated Display Technology), a

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

-based company.

Products

OSI and its parent company introduced the world's slimmest

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

player and the first digital, personal monitor for air quality. The company is known for its WeatherNow award-winning

weather station A weather station is a facility, either on land or sea, with instruments and equipment for measuring atmospheric conditions to provide information for weather forecasts and to study the weather and climate. The measurements taken include tempera ...

built for home use that uses FM radio signals from

MSN Direct MSN Direct was an FM radio-based digital service which allowed 'SPOT' portable devices to receive information from MSN services. Devices that supported MSN Direct included wristwatches, desktop clocks, in-car GPS satellite navigation units, and ev ...

to provide 4-days of regional weather information. Oregon Scientific made the first stand alone

waterproof mp3 player Waterproof audio players are devices capable of storing and playing audio media while being in contact with water. One intended use of waterproof audio players is to listen to audio where regular portable audio players cannot be used so as not to r ...

Oregon Scientific pocket camera size comparison

In 2007, CES Innovations award winners included the ATC2K Waterproof Action Cam, the Talking Wireless BBQ/Oven Thermometer and the WeatherNow II. Their Pendant MP3 Player and Waterproof MP3 player received awards for innovation at the 2005

Consumer Electronics Show CES (; formerly an initialism for Consumer Electronics Show) is an annual trade show organized by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Held in January at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Winchester, Nevada, United States, the event ty ...

. In 2003, OSI partnered with SMaL, Axia and

Fujifilm , trading as Fujifilm, or simply Fuji, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, operating in the realms of photography, optics, office and medical electronics, biotechnology, and chemicals. The offerings from ...

to produce the world’s smallest digital camera. Other products include a waterproof digital video camera, an alarm clock designed by

Philippe Starck Philippe Starck (; born 18 January 1949) is a French industrial architect and designer known for his wide range of designs, including interior design, architecture, household objects, furniture, boats and other vehicles. Life Starck was born on ...

(a French designer), a pedometer that keeps seven days' worth of data, and an electronic UV monitor among others. The company introduced the Meep! tablet marketed for children in 2012.

History

In 2000, one of the company's weather radios was recalled for errors in reporting severe weather warnings. In 2005-06, the company opened its own retail stores with locations in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the wor ...

Palo Alto Palo Alto (; Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a coastal redwood tree known as El Palo Alto. The city was es ...

and Tualatin.Brinckman, Jonathan. Bringing home the buzz. ''The Oregonian'', March 30, 2006. These stores round out their retail locations currently in Italy, China, Singapore and Hong Kong. The French subsidiary, Oregon Scientific France SARL, has been liquidated in December 2020. The UK subsidiary, Oregon Scientific (UK) Ltd., is in the process of being struck off by Companies House (April 2022) following the difficult trading conditions during the global Covid-19 pandemic and Brexit when the UK left the European Common Market. In 2021 Oregon Scientific launched its rebranded range of home weather stations moving away from their numbering format to named. These were named after astrometric events in the solar system Moon, Venus, Eclipse, Mars etc. These continue to be produced by IDT International and distributed globally through limited channels.

References

External links

Hoovers: IDT International (parent company)

IDT International Limited's website

Weather Spares - Oregon Scientific UK Premier Resseller
{{Authority control Electronics companies of the United States Companies based in Tualatin, Oregon Electronics companies established in 1989 1989 establishments in Oregon Meteorological companies Radio manufacturers