Creed and Company Limited was originally founded as Creed, Bille & Company Limited by Frederick George Creed (1871-1957) and Harald Bille (1879-1916) in 1912 to manufacture and sell telegraphy equipment. In the early 1900s, Creed had invented a keyboard-operated perforator for preparing Morse-code paper tape to be used for message transmission, a receiving perforator and a tape-driven printer which converted Morse code into printed characters on paper tape. This was known as the “Creed High Speed Automatic Printing Telegraphy System.” Bille came to an untimely death in a railroad accident in 1916, and his name was subsequently dropped from the company. In July, 1928, Creed and Company was acquired by International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation, which opened up global markets to their products. Over time competitive pressures, patent acquisition, market pressures and two world wars saw Creed and Company innovate its product line to include increasingly sophisticated teleprinters and data processing machines.

Initially, Creed operated a small manufacturing site in Glasgow between 1904 and 1909; he then moved to Selsdon Road in South Croydon. With increases in production because of the First World War, Creed and Company moved to a bigger facility, Telegraph House at East Croydon. A second site was built on the eve of the Second World War in Treforest, South Wales. In the post-war years expansion took place again in 1946 with the Purley Way site, in 1950 with the Progress Way site (both in Croydon), and in 1956 with new locations at Progress House, Croydon, and Burgess Hill, Sussex.