THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG

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existed a massive surfeit of military surplus electronics which was growing at an alarming rate as war supplies were withdrawn from various theatres of operation.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...

It was a difficult time at Mullard during wartime. First of all, they were cut off from Philips - in more ways than one as the Philips and Mullard parts of the Blackburn facility were segregated with building doorways staffed by Corps of Commissionaire guards who were instructed to not let any Philips personnel into the Mullard areas. The problem was that Philips senior staff were now treated as suspect due to having family members in enemy occupied territory and were hence a coercion and security risk.  As if that wasn't enough, the jolly Germans had a crack at the...

We now pick up our story of Mullard in 1939. Well by February 1939, the fledgeling Mullard Blackburn factory was working of sorts with just 38 staff and by June they were firmly entrenched in the manufacture of domestic receivers, components and lamp filaments. SS Eriks, mindful of the voracious demand for valves pressed ahead and by the end of 1939 a second building had been erected at Blackburn to allow valve making to commence with manufacturing instrumentation and equipment hurriedly shipped from Eindhoven in Holland. The idea was that Blackburn would commence pilot manufacture of the new EF50 valve, introduced...

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 with good business acumen, the Mitcham site could not be expanded further, what he needed was an available work force and a surfeit of cheap plentiful land upon which to build a new plant yet still have plenty of room for...

With Stanley out of the picture, Philips wasted no time in installing SS Eriks as General Manager. With technology transfer totally complete, valve production started at Mitcham and F Kloppert and ex Dutch forces man was sent over as Production Manager. By introducing draconian measures, he made Mitcham an effective plant. With production tightly controlled and mastery by Dutch management complete,, Eriks again repeated his proud boast that 'the only British part within a Mullard valve is the vacuum!' Eriks viewed his empire with puzzlement, efficiencies in manufacturing had been taken as far as they could but by 1937 it...