Alps Electric has developed, produced and sold various types of switches since the commercialization of rotary switches for TV channels in 1948, Today, Alps produces approximately six billion switches annually. Alps Electric’s S-type Rotary Switch is registered at the Center of the History of Japanese Industrial Technology overseen by the National Museum of Nature and Science, Tokyo as the first rotary switch for consumer use to be manufactured at the time when ordinary people were assembling radios by themselves, soon after the end of World War II.