Wharfedale's story begins in 1932, in the cellar of a house in Ilkley, Yorkshire, where music enthusiast and amateur engineer Gilbert Briggs built his very first loudspeaker. The location, nestled in the valley of the River Wharfe — an area known as Wharfedale — gave the brand its name, and Briggs' deep love of music, developed over years of saving to buy his first piano, gave the company its founding purpose: chase the sound of live music as closely as possible.

Briggs moved into a small Bradford factory in 1933, with his wife Doris handling early production by hand-winding voice coils, and that same year Wharfedale won both first and second place in the Bradford Radio Society's competition, earning the fledgling company its first major order. Briggs went on to pioneer genuine industry firsts, including the two-way loudspeaker and the ceramic magnet, and famously demonstrated Wharfedale speakers at Carnegie Hall in a live-versus-recorded comparison so convincing that audiences reportedly couldn't tell the difference. His influential books on loudspeaker design spread his reputation worldwide.