Originally Posted by
Hondo6
I got curious, so I checked. Per the Disraeli Gears site, EDCO was a Swiss bike component manufacturer dating from the early 1900s. Per Disraeli, EDCO derailleurs apparently were "top-end Simplex and, later, Sachs-Huret derailleurs branded as EDCO".
The company appears to have gone under in the late 1980s, but has been resurrected and now again makes bike components.
EDCO was a Swiss company producing machinery for the textiles industry whose owner happened to be a cycling enthusiast; thus, a side-hustle producing high-end bicycle components was added to their production.