ORK derailleurs were manufactured by AB Carl Särenholm of Eskilstuna, Sweden. Eskilstuna is a town with a proud history of engineering excellence. AB Carl Särenholm was a general engineering concern, established in 1893. Its lives on to this day as one of the companies that merged to form a conglomerate called Calix AB. I have included screen shots of the history page from the Calix AB web site on this site.

In 1944, the design for the ORK derailleur was patented by a serial inventor called Karl Martin Alm, who was from Enskede, a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden. The derailleur itself was a rather over-designed, lovingly machined, single pulley, design that looks as though it would last for ever, cost a fortune and change gear rather poorly. But it did feature a horizontal parallelogram action, which was innovative for the time.

In 1940, Karl Martin Alm also patented a derailleur with a more vertical parallelogram and a chainlifting system, but I have not seen any evidence for this existing in the metal.