Brief History of the Endocube / eCube  

Our interest in refrigeration started in 1993 when we were approached by Harry Banham, a refrigeration engineer, to help him complete his work on a thermometer for refrigerated food which he had developed using food as a medium to read the temperature of stored food instead of that of the air inside the refrigerator.

We thought it was a brilliant idea and helped him with the patent and the production of the product and named the product the “Endotherm” in 1994. It was mentioned in a local newspaper explaining the purpose of the word “endo”: the temperature within the product.

In 1996 we started work on a digital prototype in the shape of a dome we called the “Digital Endotherm”; with the patent in the same year. Our Dome included the use of a food stimulant and we passed many months testing products that had to be based on foodstuff, to support the considerable variation of temperatures and to be consistent and long lasting.

In 1999 Harry Banham took two boxes, developed in our factory, one shaped as a cube and a smaller round cylinder put in the cube box and our Dome changed into a double skinned cube which we then called the “Endocube” since the principle of the invention was the same as the Endotherm (i.e. the temperature within).

The new product had many added facilities to the original Endotherm. The alteration was consistent with the IPO requirements and we proceeded with our patent application under the name of Endocube.

Harry worked out, academically, the value of using the ‘food simulant’ EndoCube to control the refrigeration, tried it, and was quite astonished by the results. This was actually a ‘breakthrough’ in the world of refrigeration. It had never been done before.

The results technically showed:  (I) A major cut in compressor starts (II) an increase in refrigeration performance, (III) the quality of the refrigerated product improved as the air circulation was more stable, and finally, (IV) saving in energy usage – sometimes up to 40% reduction.

At the turn of the century the endotherm and the endocube were shown at the Millennium Dome in Greenwich London UK, attended by the Prime Minister Tony Blair, as products of the new Century. Two of our products were awarded a ‘Millennium’ prize.

In 2006 UMP started negotiations for the marketing of our products; and in March 2007 signed an exclusive marketing contract with a new company set up called Ecube Distribution Limited, for the sale of our single cavity endocube. ECD’s, then Sales & Marketing Director Spencer Freedman, discussed with Guy Lamstaes and Harry Banham (of UMP), the idea of using the name “eCube”. Freedman felt from his marketing background that the product being an Energy Cube could be made shorter to the eCube.    In December 2006, before the signing of the said contract, UMP sold a consignment of endocubes to a Portuguese company which was done under the name eCube. The following sales of eCube were then passed to ECD.

In 2007 the Guardian Newspaper and the BBC News Broadcasted a report on the eCube, and in 2009 Guy Lamstes was mentioned as one of the top 50 people to ‘save the planet’ for our work on the Endocube by the Guardian newspaper.

Although UMP was practically never involved in marketing, due to the fact UMP are mainly research & Development and manufacturing, the Endocubes have been sold under a variety of names at the request of distributors to facilitate their marketing, but the basic names, Endotherm and Endocube, never ceased to be used by the company as shown by the correspondence that have been submitted by our attorneys.

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