The story
Dualit was founded in 1945 by the German-born inventor Max Gort-Barten CBE (1914–2003) and was incorporated as Dualit Ltd in 1948. Max's first commercial product was an electric heater which he named Dual-Lite (from which the company took its name) as it could deflect heat to two parts of a room.
In 1952 Max designed a commercial six-slot toaster with a manual eject lever in his factory in Camberwell, southeast London. In 1954 the Government compulsorily purchased the factory and gave Max money to build a new factory in Bermondsey, off the Old Kent Road. Other products followed and demand rose. Eventually, their London base was too small for them and in 2003 the company moved to its present site in Crawley, West Sussex. They occupy 5,570 square metres (60,000 sq ft) with further expansion planned.
Max's son Leslie joined the company in 1972 and is now managing director. Leslie is a trained engineer and worked making metal press tools before joining Dualit. Leslie's son Alex is now a company director, having trained in product design. Before coming to Dualit, he worked as a product designer in both London and Hong Kong.
From Wikipedia’s article on Dualit, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5