THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG

Today's stroll through the Mullard company's document archive threw up this rather fetching photograph which was attached to a memo from Philips BV in 1954, advising Mullard Blackburn of how operators were trained about valve componentry and assembly at Philips Heerlen.  They advocated the use of  a LARGE training aid because apparently, girls tend to be impressed by large things and the training association sticks..    Who said it's not the size that matters but how you use it?

Today's Mullard archive photograph shows the evacuation of television picture tubes at the Mitcham works some time in 1953.  The operator is placing the tube on a diffusion pump.    Diffusion pumps use a high speed jet of vapour to direct gas molecules in the pump throat down into the bottom of the pump and out the exhaust, nowadays we use a  polyethylene glycol (PEG),  PEG ethers or more commonly, a silicon oil, however, in 1954, the preferred vapour was mercury as it didn't char, didn't contaminate the tubes with vapor backflow and of course was readily available.   The...

Oooh, what is this nice man doing........ well, you might think he's making some sort of mine though you would be wrong.  In actuality, here is a Philips technician, vibration testing a batch of experimental thyratrons and triodes for use in a European variant of the Mk 53 aerial mine's proximity fuse. The working of these devices was rather elegant.  The shell contained a miniaturised transmitter using the shell body as an antenna to emit a continuous wave of approximately 200 MHz. As the shell approached a reflective target, an interference pattern was created.  As the distance to target decreased, a radiated power...

You can read more about this Noval based twin triode on one of my valve product pages but here, today we have an excerpt from a Mullard 1954 press release extolling the vital statistics of this versatile and today revered device:

Today's blog entry is this wonderful photo dating from the late 1950s of the London HMV Oxford Street store, don't you just love the quaint descriptive parlance of "Electric Housekeeping?"      To me the Thames Trader van is special too with it's roof banner proudly proclaiming the delights of stereo.      Yes, it's the van and not the lorry version, which of course was immortalised as ....the Ten Ton Thames Trader driven by Terry Teddington from Tintwhistel to Tintagel with Ten Tons of  Tin Tin Toilet Tissue bound for Timothy Whites & Taylor's - they're "our sole"  agent.......