Nomis Sound Amplifier & Radio Co.
11 Cudmore Street, Sumerton, SA.
Showrooms - 128 Jetty Road, Glenelg, SA.

Nomis Radio Co., started manufacturing and selling radios in 1929. By 1931 they started manufacturing “Speech Amplifiers”. They found a market for public address amplifiers & systems and started selling, installing and maintaining them at exhibitions, race tracks, dance halls and hotels throughout Adelaide. 

Laurie K. Simon (1912 – 1995) the company’s founder is credited with having pioneered commercial Public Address (PA) Systems in South Australia. [1]

In 1929 Laurie Simon set up the company with the help of his father as he was only 17 at the time. He named the company Nomis Radio Company, Nomis being derived from the family name backwards.

After leaving school at the age of 14 he started work as an assistant mechanic in his father’s garage and then a job with Newton McLaren Ltd. an electrical engineering and wholesale company servicing batteries and coil winding. He left after a year as he thought he could earn more by radio servicing and building and selling his own radio sets in the family home at Sumerton. By 1933 he opened a showroom in Jetty Road Glenelg, selling radios and “Speech Amplifiers”, supplied to order or available for hire.

In 1934 he mounted a power amplifier in the cabin and speaker between the wheels of a de Havilland Fox Moth biplane owned by Mc Robertson Millar Airways for broadcasting audio from the air for events advertising department stores.

In the 1930 he designed a 300W amplifier derived from a pair of 805 triodes.[1]

The company changed their name to Nomis Amplifier and Radio Co. in April 1936. [2]

Nomis early PA system installations;

1932

• South Australia Hotel.
• Rinca Hall
• St. Francis Xavier’s Cathedral
• Palais Royal Hall

1935 

• Adelaide Oval

1936

• Glenelg Oval – SA’s centenary celebration.
• West Olympia – Richard Crooks concert.
• Exhibition Building Melbourne - Richard Crooks concert

1937

• Morphettville, Victoria Park & Cheltenham horse tracks

1938

• Gawler, Oakbank and Balakiavo horse tracks

During the post-war years Nomis installed hundreds of sound systems in churches, schools, hospitals and shopping centres.

The company also covered the Royal Tour in 1954 in Tasmania and Adelaide. The installation involved miles of wiring, hundreds of loudspeakers, multiple amplifiers and control centres at venues and along the route and included redundancy should equipment fail. [3]

The company traded until 1984 when Laurie Simon retired.[1]

[1] Electronics Australia, Feb 1993, Neville Williams, When I Think Back.
[2] Glenelg Guardian (SA,) Apr 1, 1936, Page 4.
[3] News (SA), Feb 17, 1954, Page 28.