The origins of Wound Magnetics can be traced to the business founded by Sebastian Ziani de Ferranti in 1882, which built the world's first high voltage alternating current power station. Subsequently the company diversified into the design and manufacture of transformers, meters and switchgear for the electricity supply industry, which proved to be the pattern for successful development.

Some fifty years later, one of his new factories in Edinburgh began to build the then revolutionary gyroscopic gunsight. This site became the largest science based company in Scotland, now BAe Systems.

Wound Magnetics is the offspring of this company, which transferred Ferranti Professional Components to Dundee in 1967