The demise of Mullard’s and my part in it. After coming out of the army in 1955 with a wife and one small child, I went back to work on construction, the summer and fall of 1956 turned out be quite wet, which meant we were sent home from work many times, my wife being a much better mathematician then I soon worked out that although I was being paid quite good money, by the time you calculated time lost, I hadn’t earned very much at all. After being laid off once again I went to Mullard’s and was taken on in the TV department, it was shift work which if my memory serves me correct, the shifts were to 6 to 2, 2 to 10, 10 to 6, this involved in putting the TV screen with a tube inserted, onto a vacuum pump, I can’t remember how many the vacuum pump held but I believe we was expected to do 88 per shift, I think they held about 20, as they moved round the air was sucked out creating a vacuum, when the time was up you would remove the shield, while holding the tube with one hand we would use something like an acetylene torch, to heat the little stem until the glass started to melt, as it did so you would lift the tube stretching the glass and then nip it off with a flame sealing it tight, they then went on a conveyor belt for inspection. Some chaps useing the bits of glass tube left over, I think we called them stingles, would heat them and blow the glass to make animals etc. quite good some of them. Quite enjoyed that job money wasn’t bad and there was no downtime, sadly after a while they came and said that the business was moving to Blackburn or up North somewhere, there was no way that I was in going to move up North so they offered me another position in a different department, which I accepted, this was quite exciting as it was in the experimental stage of transistors, which of course went on to replace valves in radios etc, they say there is nothing new in the world and their right, to those of us old enough to remember radios used to be run with a thing called a Cats whisker, which needed a Crystal, diode and a contact point plus Ariel, this was replaced by the valves which Mullards made by the million, in the early days radios still needed a long Ariel to get a good signal but if you had power at least you didn’t need a battery. So here I was on the brink of new wonders, and having an inquiring mind I wanted to know what was going on, the first job I was given was to assist a chap called Don who had the tasks of feeding these little trays of unfinished transistors through one side of this big oven, I believe they went through, the first side at about 450 degrees, when they came out the other end they had to go through the other side at 750 degrees I think, this intrigued me so I asked what it was for and had it explained to me. The process used germanium recovered from soot which was heated to a tremendous temperature and compressed; it came out very hard, was sliced, then cut into little squares, this would be heart of the transistor, the other was a soft solder called indium, this was extruded through a big press to which ever width or length was needed and laid on Bakelite trays and sent on to the appropriate department, another part of my job. I learnt that the transistor was still based on the old cat Whisker principle, where the wires were connected in some way to the diode, held by the indium solder, the idea of putting it through the oven at two different temperatures with to find out which depth of penetration worked best, I suppose it was this interest in wanting to know the ins and outs of the pig’s bum so to speak, created my next job, I was summoned to meet a man I believe his name was Mr Scott or Dr Scott, he had a very white coat was obviously reasonably important. I was taken to an area where there was a large table on which was a glass plate, numerous corks and piles of powder, some shellac, some diodes which had already gone through the ovens and had the Germanium attached , a chamois leather and another type of cloth, I was instructed to cut a slit in the top of the Cork place the diode in the centre, cover it with shellac and when it was dry, take small portions of each part of powder and spread them on the cloth on top of the glass, proceed to remove the surplus shellac by using a circular motion on the various grades of powder, which went from rough to smooth, I would point out at this time that the roughest powder was finer than talcum powder, and the smoothest was like silk, so away I went, polishing in the various grades of power, I had a microscope which I could use to see the progress, after about two hours I had removed all the shellac using the rough powder, and proceeded then to use the other powders in order until at the end of the day I had produced about three, these were taken to Mr or Dr Scott and he trotted off quite happily. After a couple of days I became a little more proficient and produced four or five, but it proves to be the most slow, boring, tedious job I’ve ever done, I would find myself dropping off to sleep if I wasn’t careful, the sun was shining through the windows in the roof and it was quite warm at times. I then had a wonderful idea my epiphany if you like, my friend Eric Reynolds worked at Venner time switches, I knew he did some very delicate work and had a set of very fine needle files, and asked him if you could get me some which of course he did (I should point out that this time that I never saw Mr or Dr Scott every day sometimes a few days would elapse) with the aid of the files, still finishing with the various grades of powder, I had pushed my production to 10 to 15 a day, inspecting them under the microscope they looked fine to me, the germanium in the middle was slightly raised and highly polished, while the indium solder, had decreased much more being softer, but you could still be see the defining marks where they had gone through the other different temperatures. I arrived at work one day and scarcely got to the bench, where Mr or Dr Scott appeared with a couple of my units in his hand, he said what’s happened! What have you done! Now having been battered all through school, and learning how to navigate the army, my first reaction was self-preservation, nothing say I! What did you do different says he!(Now in life you sometimes meet people in authority that have something between ears) Mr or Dr Scott was one of them, he said did anybody ever tell you why you were doing this? No say I! Right follow me he says, off we trot a corner of the floor, where he shows me this huge machine which he tells me is the electronic microscope, placing one of my units on a pinprick of light, he takes me to the end where there is a huge screen, my little unit is now the size of a bus and looks wonderful, the germanium strip down the middle looks as big as your average Street and beautifully shiny, the indium solder to either side is decreased but flawless, he removes that unit and replaces it with one that I did the day before, I couldn’t believe it the highly polished germanium strip looks like a D8 Caterpillar tractor had been driven across it, it was cracked and chipped, the cracks in it looking like the Sahara desert after a 20 year drought, pieces of the germanium were pushed into the indium solder like giant monoliths, and the grains of the finishing power looked like giant boulders on the surface of the moon, none of this could be seen through little microscope I was using, I knew immediately the game was up, the only thing left was to come clean, to throw myself on his mercy, he was very good when I explained that I was only trying to hurry the process up, although sympathetic, he assured me that the old way was the only way forward, so it was back to that deadly old routine, I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle that, so asked if I could go back on the floor, they said that was fine if I would help them out by doing four hours a day until they found someone else, so this I did it didn’t take long to find somebody else, so I was happy. I enjoyed my time working there, but having worked outside all my life on the building, I didn’t like being cooped up in a factory, so when somebody asked me to go back to work for him, I left and went back to the building. Ted Blowers
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 19:13:07 +0000
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