THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG — ss eriks

Well, the early to mid 1950s were an exciting time for Mullard – some would say, the ‘Golden Age’, 1950 dawned and Mullard was selling a nice range of TVs in the shape of MTS 521 & MTS 634 models to the hungry post war market as endorsed by Arthur Askey – a grateful public and Arthur said ‘ I thank you all!’ or was it ‘Where’s me washboard!’ Also in 1950 we first see the appearance of Sidney The Service Engineer whom you also see gracing the top of these pages – he was a jolly chap utilised in...

I was chatting with my pal Alan Wyatt some time ago - you know him, the nice chap who runs the National Valve Museum and whilst we were chewing the fat on all things thermionic, our conversation meandered to the matter that there are very few photos of the Mullard big cheeses out there - what did they look like, does anyone know?  Alan has put a picture of the Captain on his website so I thought I would follow suit  but additionally also allow you to put names to other Mullard faces: - OK, for our first line up...

I thought I would write a series of blog articles on what is inside a valve.  Famously, the head of Mullard UK, the ex-Philips SS Eriks once stated that the only British thing inside a Mullard valve was the vacuum and after I recently waffled on to some poor chap about electrode cage construction, pinches and getter flashing, they were bemused so I thought that I had better expand on the great Dutch master's scathing comment, so, without further ado, let's talk about......... what's in a valve.................................. The picture below shows a sectioned Mullard EL37 output pentode, as you can see, this...

Well, the war was over and 1946 dawned. America had cut off Lend-Lease money to the UK and materials for home and export production were in short supply. There existed a massive surfeit of military surplus electronics which was growing at an alarming rate as war supplies were withdrawn from various theatres of operation. At this time, the great military surplus gravy train was about to commence where not only radio equipment and componentry were available for knockdown prices but military vehicles and even aircraft – and ex RAF pilots to fly them – typically those that did not possess...

What a lovely aerial photo of the Mullard factory at Little Harwood which is at the northern edge of Blackburn.  This photo was taken sometime in 1935 not long after factory construction commenced, but, bigger and better things were on the way. It was 1937 and SS Eriks, General Manager of Mullard, sat in his office, comfortable in his Tan-sad office chair but he was troubled. Mitcham could no longer keep up with the pace of production required to fulfill the radio world's voracious demands for thermionic devices - something had to be done.  Eriks was a chap whom melded humanitarianism...