THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG — mullard

The march of time and progresss marched inexorably on at Mullard's and an interesting development occurred for CRT in 1954.  If you look at some of my earlier blog postings on the manufacture of CRT, you will see that the EHT connections provided pre-54 were somewhat different to those you may be more familiar with but this did indeed change in 1954. If you recall, the earlier EHT connection comprised of a number of wires fused into the side of the envelope which was in turn soldered to a metal cap on the tube's exterior wall.  To make such connectons...

Don't you just love the parlance "crystal diode".  1954 was the year that Mullard took their first steps into the mass market with semiconductors.  Trumpetting their new  product as having low shunt capacities and higher rectification efficiency than those old fashioned valve things, the range started with two devices specially developed for television use.   There were teething problems as the TV trade tended to attach these new fangled devices into TV circuits using a poker heated in t'fire thence cooking these early and not particularly robiut devices but application of tweezer heatsinks thoughfully provided by an arrangement between Mullard and...

When Band III TV was introduced in Britain early in 1954, Mullard heralded in the new age by having a range of valves available for the new receivers some two weeks after the British Government's TV policy had been confirmed in the House of Commons. Here, we see Timothy Bustard, a Toolmaker at Mullard's Mitcham factory hand finishing a new anode making tool for the PCF80 triode-pentode valve which acted as a frequency changer for Band III TV transmissions. The tool is used in a press where nickel sheet is fed into the press and seven successive operations of punching...

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?

Valves as we know, have many different functions and for each application there are certain parameters which ensure the best use in these applications, for example: -  For an audio amplifier - knowledge of the maximal power output and distortion of an output valve for various levels of signal input under variable anode load resistance and grid load resistance is important. For a radio receiver - knowledge of the cross-modulation factor allows effective choice of frequency changer valves and IF amplifier valves so that effective AGC circuits may be designed. In order to measure these parameters and others such as equivalent noise resistance, hum level, conversion...