The Versol brand of derailleurs appears to originate from Zurich in Switzerland, and may be the creation of Ernst Trost. Ernst Trost certainly held a number of Swiss patents for derailleur systems, including one for the design of the Versol Record.

Versol appear to have been active in the 1950s, producing at least three basic models:

• the rod-operated single pulley Versol Record
• a single pulley, pull-chain, design possibly called the Versol-X
• a twin pulley, pull-chain, touring, model

There is a persistent legend about a large stash of brand new Versol Record derailleurs (possibly many hundreds) being discovered in about 2005 behind a stack of boxes in this or that bankrupt central European bike factory. But whether this is true (and what happened to them) still eludes me. Perhaps the Versol Record in this collection is one of them.