Daniel Prenn, a Russian-born civil engineer who lived in Berlin, was a champion Davis Cup tennis player (ranked 8th in the world). Persecuted by the Nazis and barred from playing tennis because he was Jewish, Prenn fled Germany in 1934 and settled in the United Kingdom. He founded Truvox in London in 1935 and started out manufacturing loudspeakers. In the late 1930s, Prenn also began importing German-made floor cleaning equipment and after the war, Truvox expanded into the design and manufacture of a wide range of floor maintenance equipment. In 1967 this side of the business separated from Truvox's audio side to become Truvox Floorcraft but remained in the group until 1990 when they became an independent company, one which survives to this day as Truvox International.

In 1949 Prenn bought out the ailing British Rola-Celestion loudspeaker company (Celestion remained part of Prenn's industrial group until 1992.) Ever the astute business man, Prenn acquired several other small British electronics and communications companies, including the British Communications Corporation (BCC) who specialised in police and military radio communications. BCC soon branched into air traffic control voice logging recorders in 1956 in competition with the pioneers in that field, Thermionic Products Ltd, who had produced the first British built tape recorder in 1949. When Thermionics went into receivership in 1958, Prenn also bought that company and expanded their world leading range of airfield voice loggers into digital data recording.

In 1952 Truvox launched its own basic but superior 3-motor tape-deck; it became an instant success and by the late 1950s Truvox was a force to be reckoned with in high-quality domestic tape recorder market, especially with the Series 80 of 1961 which set new standards in design. In 1963 Truvox designed a language laboratory for the Rank Organisation, a move which secured them the lead in this lucrative field and in the field of education.

April 1964 saw the launch of the TSA100, Britain's first production transistorised stereo-amplifier. This was followed by a matching FM tuner and loudspeaker which, with the Series 100 stereo tape recorder, formed one of the first complete stereo domestic hi-fi systems.

In 1967 Prenn merged Truvox and Thermionics but by 1969, Truvox, along with other leading British tape recorder companies like Brenell and Ferrograph, were facing impossibly tough Japanese competition from the likes of Sony, Akai and Teac. With the Truvox audio side now of such insignificance to the Group's vast military contracts, Thermionics merged with the Racal Electronics company to form a massive military communications corporation, Racal-Thermionics. The Truvox audio business closed down in 1970, though for a short while the Truvox Series 200 tape deck continued in production in modified form as the Thermionics T-3000 4-channel portable data recorder.

Daniel Prenn passed away in 1991. Racal-Thermionics later became Racal-Recorders and survive today as Thales Contact Solutions, specialising in call centre communications equipment. Truvox International remains in existence solely as a manufacturer of professional floor cleaning equipment. Sadly, their web site 'history' section devotes only a single sentence in reference to their illustrious audio past and no mention of Daniel Prenn, although Prenn's youngest son, John, is Managing Director.