Edwin K. Jensen, 1906-1974
Edwin
Karl Jensen was born in Aarhus, Jutland, on the 13th March, 1906. In 1925 he
graduated from high school (mathematics) in Aarhus, and in 1932 he finally
graduated as an engineer (electronics) from the Technical University of Denmark
(Danmarks Tekniske Højskole) in Copenhagen. In the years 1932-1934 he worked as a sound film
consultant at the Rialto theatre in Copenhagen and decided to settle in the
capital, and the following years he worked for the company Torotor
(1934-1938) and the company American Apparate Co.
(1938-1940) before he managed to establish his own company, A/S Jensen Motor
Co., mainly producing electric cars during the early years, 1940-1943, of World
War II. However, it was necessary for the company and Edwin Karl Jensen to
co-operate with the German army to get supplies, and for that he received a
sentence at the end of the war for collaboration with the occupying forces.
After a few years, in 1947, Edwin Karl Jensen became works engineer in the
company A/S Jensen & Hoffmann, a company founded in 1911 and officially
owned by his father-in-law (second marriage). In the late forties the company
produced and exported among other things also very durable gramophone needles.
During
those years, before 1949, he had again established good relations with the
friends he had before the war, among others the noted electronics engineer Jørgen Mølkier (1920-1997).
Together they initiated a limited production of 20-selection automatic
phonographs (jukeboxes) in the name of the company A/S Jensen & Hoffmann,
but Edwin Karl Jensen realized from the beginning that it was necessary to
produce large numbers to make it worthwhile to have that kind of production in
Denmark. In 1954 the
company name changed to Jensen Music Automates A/S (licensed by AMI Inc. in the
States), and it soon became the largest and most important jukebox producing
company in Europe (around 1955-56) with export of machines with the brand name Jensen
IMA/AMI
Music Box to more
than thirty countries. In 1958 the company finally stopped producing jukeboxes
due to serious competition mainly from German manufacturers but also from
importers of new, well designed Silver Age machines from the States.
Thus, the company specialized in mass-production of television sets, and its
name changed to Jensen Music & Television A/S. The company became the first
in fact to introduce 23" bonded-shield kinescopes on the Danish market.
Edwin
Karl Jensen was the managing director and also the chairman of the board of the
following companies related to the jukebox industry: Jensen Music Automates A/S
(1954-1958), Jensen Music & Television A/S (1958-1963), and also of the
company Dansk Grammofon Automat A/S (1954-1960), a
company that operated Jensen (IMA/AMI) as well as American AMI jukeboxes on the domestic market. Edwin Karl
Jensen was also as founding member the chairman of the Danish organisation of manufacturers and operators, Foreningen af Fabrikanter og Opstillere af
Musikautomater i Danmark. After 1963, when the formerly jukebox
producing company had collapsed due to heavy losses on the domestic market,
Edwin Karl Jensen established his own consulting engineering company named
Jensen Electronic Engineering, and the following decade he worked intensely
with the development of new carburators for the car
industry. He was granted world-wide patents for some of his most significant
inventions (the last of the patents was granted in 1973). Edwin Karl Jensen
died on the 23rd September, 1974, only 68 years of age, and was buried in the
communal grave Birkelunden (Frederiksberg) in Copenhagen.
Gert J. Almind