As someone young, I am amazed at the level of automation even back then. Attention to quality seems to be much better than today. Back when Britain was great.
It wasn't just Britain. It was like that all over the world. In the USA, RCA put the highest quality into their design and builds. Precision was paramount as well the highest quality of parts and workmanship. The RCA color CRT was literally the best on the planet back in the 1950s to early 1970s. But as time goes on, quality has left the scene for the most part. The TVs made now are no longer made by the "big guys." They are mostly made in China with low quality parts, bad workmanship and lack of care in design and build. Panasonic still made good TVs. We have 2 Panasonic TVs, plasma, one is 3D and other than minor repairs, they are flawless. And as for repairs, the only issues I have had to fix is on the 3D TV, it started to turn itself off after being turned on. It turns out that this was a good thing! One of the cooling fans stopped spinning and the system detected that, so went into shutdown mode. That was an easy fix. But I noticed that one of the main power supply caps (a large one) was just beginning to bulge at the top. I replaced that and it's been working fine ever since. The other Panasonic, not 3D, failed once and that too was just a power supply cap. Easy fix., BUT.... I've been through 4 SONY 4K TVS! The first one, that I just use for the computer, was excellent for 2 years and it started to have failing LEDs. That was replaced under warranty with a GARBAGE model. I basically brought that home, connected it, only to find that it has these very thing, PINK super fine hairline marks on the inner layers. I returned that one that day and they gave me another one (this is Best Buy). I get THAT one home (same model) got it all set up only to find that it had an actual CRACK right in the center/bottom of the screen. It was a perfect 1/2 circle! Also, INSIDE the layers! By this time, the manager of this BestBuy location was involved and he appreciated that I wasn't angry. I explained that I was a TV Repairman long ago, so this kind of thing wasn't new. The good thing, though, was that for that month, a Sony rep was in the store. We had some chats in private and he admitted that this particular model is known to have problems and he didn't understand why Sony was still sending them out instead of doing a recall on them. Needless to say, I didn't want a 4th one, so the manager offered me a top of the line model that was like $700 more. I said that was too much for just a "computer monitor". So, he was very cool about it. He gave it to me for cost,which then only cost me $100 more, including another 4 year warranty. LOL It's been great. Knock on faux wood. 😂😅🤣
Nice to see a British documentary about manufacturing not presented by two overgrown children shouting "COR! WOW!" and "THAT'S AMAZING!" every time a basic fact is patiently explained to them by a bemused line manager...
How I love music in those oldie documentaries, it was so lively and optimistic! Today it sounds like some darn war or catastrophe is going on 24/7 all around the globe, with those dramatic string staccatos, bombastic cymbal crashes and Carmina-Buranesque choirs. The world completely lost its sense of humour, everything became dead serious, even utter nonsense.
I couldn't agree more, TaigaFolk. Those docus are the bee's knees. As for the present-day ongoing tympani-created tension, it's that there ProTools that's making us all feel like we're living on Death's Doorstep. And not Dad's Army.
Does anyone else see the irony of a colour film used to show production of a black and white tv? I just smiled as I remember watching a ‘huge’ 26 inch b&w tv and thinking, “wow”! Great film….
@@bingola45 Yeah. B&W valve TVs used to "boot up". I suppose you "powered" them "down" when that bloody minister came on for Late Call (or whatever they had down south). 10-4 Over and out.
Just amazing Tv set manufacturing documentary....Had no idea early 1960's Tv production utilized large Pc boards & such advanced assembly technology....
I was making Tubes for Philips / Mullard in the 80's-90's and I recall using 2 foot piece of 1" plastic hose to hit the screen as hard as possible, to remove particles that can become lodged in the slots of a shadow-mask, behind the screen of the Glass Bulb. Ah memories!. The said device was referred to as ones _'Hogger'_ - and Hoggering being the act of striking the face of a television :)
I worked in a regunning factory in the 90s and we had a pneumatic hammer with a rubber end that would rattle against the glass. If that didn't cut it, out came the fence post and we would slam the tube face with the end of the post. We called it spot knocking. I learnt just how strong the tube faces were 🙂
That`s the Spon St works, where i had an interview for an engineering apprenticeship in `77, i was 16. There is a cinema complex there now. When the factory was demolished it exposed walls with huge old advertisments for GEC televisions.My father was in the toolroom at the Stoke plant and my mum was a coilwinder at the Helen St site. All our electrical goods were GEC (if they made them) staff discount and you could have the installments deducted from your pay packet.
I was very fascinated by this. Thanks for posting. GEC were one of the first firms to use PCBs and many other firms used complete hand wiring with tag boards well into the 60s. I'm surprised how automated the production actually was for the time.
Many manufacturers continued using point to point wiring because there were many problems encountered with early printed circuit boards, such as traces falling off the board, poor solder joints, etc. Zenith was one such company, they employed hand wired chassis right into the 1970s. Other manufacturers used a mix of hand wiring and printed circuits in their chassis, such as they would use P.C boards for the I.F strip, but use hand wiring in the high voltage section, and anywhere they had hot running tubes/valves.
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Gosh... the women had a lot of hard work assembling those sets. The repitition must have been head wrecking. When u got home last thing you wanted to do was look at the TV!
@@agfagaevart no. probably not. the cost would have been prohibitive compared to the wage. It would have taken around one year of wages to pay it off!!
Many people had a TV by the 60s. Don't forget the man would definitely be out working, at a better paid job. TV sets were also usually rented out, which meant cheaper upgrades, free repairs and cheaper than buying.
We Do Not Partake In Such Menial Activitys As Football We Prefer To Create Wonderful Music And Spread It To As Many Worlds As Possible Stay Safe Earthling
My first job in the late 1960's was making the cabinets for TV and Radiograms,cannot remember GEC but we did, ITT KB and Thorn EMI electronics cabinets for both Radiogram and televisions.
GEC used double sided boards which although common today weren't so much back in the day...I remember repairing the old hybrid Pye colour tv's with a CDA board that used to look like the ocean waves as time went by, due the heat from the 4 valves (3 PCL84's and a PL802)...A company called LEDCO even made a solid state version of the PL802 which wasn't all to reliable!..The old KB (Kolster-Brandes) used hand wired chassis and even had a baby alarm input (State of the art stuff :)
I love how even the young men loading the trucks are wearing suits. People back then had so much pride in how they looked, no matter what the job was. If you met them outside work, you would automatically have respect and kindness towards them
Even the typical "family man" watching television with his family was wearing a suit and tie. My dad used to watch TV wearing a tie. He even tended his allotment wearing a tie.. Actually it was a pain in the arse world full of petty shit. Don't get fooled by nostalgia.
Před 5 lety+6
Working in a jacket and tie was horrible. Thanks God those days are gone forever.
Not sure about the UK, but in the USA, it was common for people to dress up for these demonstration films and for executives to make cameo appearances. I remember one of a guy demonstrating a handicap van and ramp in a 3 piece suit. That said, people did dress better back then, and they fit into whatever clothes they wore better than today.
Fascinating to me as I have never worked in a large company but run my own very small scale electronics manufacturing. Apart from valves (or as we call them, pickled electrodes) the biggest difference between large scale manufacturing now and then is that their board assembly line was custom configured for that particular assembly. These days the machines are robotic, so by simply changing the program and the component carriers you can switch from televisions to phones, or between one model phone and another. The actual printed circuit (PCB) fabrication process is 100% familiar; I've made and used boards with pretty much that exact same workflow except for punching all the holes in one hit. I hand drilled hundreds of boards as a young lad. The process today is much more sophisticated although the underlying principle is still the same: selective etching of a copper laminated sheet of insulating material. Also the level of automation in the PCB industry is mind boggling. As a consequence I, as now a hobbyist, can get 5 boards made to my computer aided design and delivered from China for about $20.
From China? You would think that the shipping costs would render such a transaction unaffordable. There must be some major economy factor involved which mitigates the transport costs. I wonder what that could be?
@@bingola45 That ~$20 is $2 for the boards and ~$18 for airmail. The question to ask is how can an eBay vendor in CHina sell you a 75 cent gadget with free delivery?
This is a fascinating document from social, manufacturing, and electronic viewpoints. I pine a little for when devices could be hand-made and comprehended by individuals. I bet there isn't a single person who fully understands every aspect of any modern TV.
Advanced yes. But many factories did not improve their manufacturing techniques into the 1970s and '80s, and used the same practices, hence their decline. And oh yeah, thanks to competition from the Far East. 16:44 Dunno about that mate.
A great film to see, many thanks for posting this gem. Its wonderful to see the time when England made things in our own factories employing local people. I have owned several GEC TV's over many years and always found them well built & reliable for their time.
I totally agree with you those were the days when each country had manufacturing like this and employed many people. And give reason to go to school to become and engineer to hopefully work in one of these industries. The problem now is corporate greed and politicians that encourage all this to be built off shore. Those were the golden years.
I'm always torn when watching these films. On the one hand, I worry about what consumerism is doing to the environment; do we really need all this stuff? On the other, seeing the innovative techniques developed by manufacturing engineers is awesome. And it was techniques like the ones seen here that brought the prices of consumer goods like TVs down. I'm also saddened that manufacturing like this left the UK. There is no reason except greed that manufacturing couldn't have stayed in the UK. Frank Phillip's clipped and clear narration just put the cherry on top for me!
Looking at the layout of the floor in the high up long shots I think that GEC building was in Spon Street. I worked there from 1983 to 1986 (Fourth Floor) but at that time it wasn't producing TV's but Telephone Network Circuits.. I was a Technician there and worked on 2GHz to 19GHz equipment. Shame there wasn't an outside shot of the building.
I wondered if it was based in Spon Street, now long replaced by the Skydome even though it was a listed building. I remember being bored to death in the apprentice training school that was based in Spon Street in the early 1970s.
The good old days, when TV and radio manufacturing in this country was in full swing. Labour intensive it may have been, but at least it was employment with jobs.
I must say that was very therapeutic to watch and listen to!. What geniuses all the team were back then in that factory 60 years ago, how they took great care, and attention to detail was amazing!. Regards.
We had a two channel GEC similar to these with a sliding door which covered the screen. It's true when people say " They just don't make things like they used to " . GEC was huge when this film was made , they made everything from railway trains to tv sets , radios and cookers to electrical and electronic parts.
All destroyed when GEC management made the catastrophic mistake of divesting itself of all the less exciting profitable sections, turned into Marconi and went all out for the telecom bubble.
@@MrsZambezi Trying to put Intel Pentium processors into System X exchanges was a total disaster, upgrading the GEC designed processors would have made more sense but they wanted bragging rights of using Pentium chips.
I grew up with a rented GEC in my parents' living room in the 70s. Among several repair callouts, I remember one where the power button broke free and disappeared inside the casing - British engineering at its best... eventually my parents bought a Panasonic and never looked back! Also, RF suppression was still rare in the early 70s, causing picture breakup whenever the neighbours used a lawnmower or a motorbike went past.
I'm interested why you have such a low opinion of British engineering. It's also clear you have no understanding of RF suppression, because that has to be applied to whatever creates the interference. It can't be applied to a TV.
@@MrsZambezi It's a 'generation' thing. 'Britain is Shit' was the message taught to the post-war generations, in order to pave the way for pan-European government. I grew up with it; happily I was one of those who saw through it.
@@MrsZambezi From my experience, the Japanese were just better at putting things together right the first time than any western country. When they started selling radios in the USA, a lot of them sounded like crap and were mediocre in many respects, but they didn't break down. It might be something to do with the corporate structures defined in Western law; companies seem to find it easier to coast on past accomplishments, then pay off their stockholders and leave their creditors holding the bag when they can no longer compete.
@@pcno2832 I still use my 60s Hacker. There never was a reliability problem with British radios. The pocket radios from Hong Kong and Japan sold because they were cheaper.
we were still watching 1950's television in 1960. My Dad always bought used tvs. When color tv came out we were probably the last to get one and the color was all messed up because of bad tubes and my dad was color blind. We didnt know it eather. He would ask my mom if the colors were correct, then mess it up anyways because he couldnt tell blue from green.
Thank you, loved that video for it kick started some memories of a time not so long ago. Yes indeed, in those days they did indeed have thick circuit boards supported by chassis made of steel not plastic . Sadly, like in all things even with the best components of the times which made up this miracle vhf product came one serious flaw? Those power hungry heat producing vacuum tubes had very short lifespans. as for that b&w single gun picture tube not a problem for it was built to last for sure. No, it produced little heat itself but collectively now we have a serious watts problem here. after tech school opened up a tv repair shop in 71 and vacumm tube sets like those were still everywhere. Now fixing sets like these were fairly easy for most had similar problems. via horz or vert hold problems mostly sometimes some scratchy sound due to the 4.5 mhz osc going off freq due to a leaky tube or bad cap. Now a lot of sets I repaired were sadly, half transistor color sets via (convergence ry.by.gy. nightmares) and many times even with a scope evaluation, and a sams ya would scratch your hair out trying to repair em.
I felt so "up" on watching this that i ran out and bought a GEC telly. Still waiting for it to arrive, but I recognize that it's hard to get non-visually-impaired quality control staff in sexy dresses, so I won't complain yet. I can't wait to see if it's real mahogany or just a veneer.
I must admit, my first thought when I saw this video was "Those valves really need some sort of restraining clip to hold them in when they're mounted vertically like that."
I worked on some of them as well, but I don't remember much about them. Our first colour TV was a GEC 2041 hybrid. I had still a lot to learn then, and when the TV suddenly developed a dull picture, I was convinced the crt had packed in. It turned out to be the 100K screen grid/ 2nd anode feed resistor which had burned up due to being underrated wattage wise!☺
I wonder what they would have made of today's pick & place machines, and the few humans needed to run an entire plant. A great video though, thanks for sharing!
I had a GEC (colour) television in the late 70s. It had a Hitachi CRT and it was very reliable. Pity the "smart" whizz-kids in the city of London didn't realise what value they had in the GEC company before selling off all their manufacturing to become "Marconi" and finally destroying the company.
It was GEC Marconi for a very long time, long before its demise. You're correct about Hitachi tubes, the last ranges of GEC TVs were actually badge engineered Hitachi sets.
@@cambridgemart2075 The GEC heavy engineering core side of the business (railways, power plant etc.) had joined up with Alsthom of France to become GEC-Alstom (I think that they had dropped the "H" from the name by then) but then sold all their share to Alstom to concentrate on the small consumer and electronic goods and made a complete pig's ear of it. The GEC brand name was sold to GE of the USA thus ending confusion between the 2 separate companies.
@@MervynPartin There was a very large part of the company involved in aerospace, defence, and space, that was GEC-Marconi's area of speciality and they were in existence well into the 90s, parts of it past 2000.
The GEC-Hitachi factory was at Hirwaun in wales, ostensibly a joint venture but really a way for Hitachi to gain access to the UK by circumventing the import quotas. The late 70's Labour government gave huge grants to foreign companies to build factories in areas of high unemploymemt to keep the jobless figures down. The conservatives that replaced them followed a similar policy
The commentary is BBC Home Service stalwart, Frank Philips. He was a newsreader during the war, and on a Nazi list. He also did voice-overs, especially on cinema newsreels
@@Ndlanding Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany compiled lists of the names of people to be arrested and imprisoned (or worse) when Britain had been invaded and taken over.
@@6dBperOctave Thanks, 6dB. I guess that's still going on around the world, but now they don't even invade before silencing the journalists. Sad, innit?
Frank Philips was not a journalist. He was a radio announcer. All sort of prominent (and not prominent) people were on the lists to be rounded up if/when the Nazis invaded Britain.
My aunt used to sit on the arm of a chair with her hand at the back of a 17 inch PYE trying to fix the horizontal hold. Being a widow with little money she couldn't afford to have it fixed. Don't think she ever did.. This was in the late 50's....
Wonderful film. A great insight into TV production, using what was the new PCB technology. The double sided print could be a bit of a bugger until you got used to it. The Hurdy Gurdy radio museum has one of these and when I've finished the Bush TV62, I might tackle it next.
I don't know about years of trouble free service, I remember repairing them : ) Hot valves and printed boards caused the paxoline boards to carbonate. Printed boards were better suited to transistors God Bless
It's nice to see that people are working now it's most automated wonder how much jobs have begin lost with this and how much workforces have begin cut down and how much manufacture as begin sent abroad like to China
echodelta, I remember we had an Ultra t.v in the early 60s which had a switch for 405 lines and 625 lines, 625 lines was the standard until modern T.Vs without a CRT [tube]
We did not have a colour TV until 1975, my mom kept her money for more important stuff like food and a car. No need for many foodbanks back then, most people knew the value of money back then, unlike today.
The old core memories for computers were made in the far East because the women there, with smaller hands, were better at manipulating the thread-like wires and tiny ferrite cores they contained.
If this was an American made documentary we'd be subjected to the world "Quality" in every sentence, quality components, Quality materials, Quality Quality control etc, it's like they have to reinforce or remind everyone.
Back when companies REALLY wanted to make sure you were happy right out of the box, polishing, testing and retesting. Wouldn't it be nice now to not have to return something because it's faulty. At least once every couple of years I always have to return something faulty.
Now they have that little sticker that says "Q.C. Passed" that they stick on everything. Would love to see what the Chinese version of "quality control" is. I'm sure it's really just weather or not the little sticker got stuck on in the right spot....
We know today that "valve's" should not be touched with bare fingers i.e. gloves should be worn as finger grease will cause them to pop or malfunction ... I have a preamp that uses valves and I learnt quickly not to touch them (expensive Russian replacements) Otherwise, a very interesting old film.
@@allancopland1768 If you read, I did spell it correctly. My phone auto spell checked it wrong first time - weird. In regards to clean valves, I know many who think it's crap, but in the audiophile world its always recommended you don't touch them. Even as a kid, I remember the TV repair man wearing gloves when replacing tubes. It's an issue of uneven heating more than hot spots ... It will change the sound of your amp (whether you notice or not) and will effect the life of your tubes. The oils create cold spots, not hot spots, even worse for the glass as far as breakage and optimal/consistent output. I remember years ago leaving a thumb print on a power amp tube which cracked just days later. Maybe it is crap and I just had a faulty tube. I must have OCD as I'm always cleaning 😂
@@ProjectOverseer I agree Chris- it's also the same when handling halogen bulbs. Grease from the fingers will shorten their life. Surprised someone of the vintage who uses the word 'bunkum' doesn't understand this. Poppycock!
Ex TV repairman myself. Even the valve manufacturers make no mention of gloves. It's all B/S. Audiophiles usually believe anything they are told by their dealer.... who is in the business of making as much money as they can from mythical stuff. Valves do not 'pop or malfunction' if you touch them... that one is for the fairies.
it was a common trick when they used valves and homes were full of nicotine smoke and heated with coal. I still find it mind boggling that today they moan about traffic pollution so much. Things were far worse 45-60 years ago.
Yes. That would've caused any connection issues (cold solder joints etc) to show up at least momentarily, leading to that unit not getting packaged but fixed instead
Hats off to the engineers who had to patiently design those PCBs with stick-on tapes, decades before Altium and all the other computer-aided PCB design tools we take for granted now. Yeah, ferric chloride has a unique aroma. :)
This brings back memories for me. I worked in a printed wiring house while in college.... My dungarees were rotting out from acid exposure every couple of weeks.
I operated a small scale flowsolder machine in tha 1970 making simple games consoles (telefusion engineering) there was no extraction that I can remember the fumes from the flux were strong, and very little training or health and safety.
Ahh; the glory days of the lethal live chassis! Many a TV servicing engineer had received painful, and sometimes deadly, 250V electric shocks from TV and wireless sets in houses where the live and neutral (now line and neutral) wires were transposed, or where a reversible two pin mains extension connector had been added to the cable. If that had happened, the chassis was at 250V instead of roughly zero. Modern equipment with a live chassis is illegal, for safety reasons.
Yes, I remember that little death trap very well. I was in a house loft, aglining a TV antenna while the 'guvnor' was down stairs shouting "a bit to the left.......hold it there". Holding the aluminium TV antenna in one hand....I stretch over and grabbed a cold water pipe to steady myself. Wham! Truely the most severe electric shock in my entire TV workshop career.
@@hairybear7705 I think that I have you beat. LOL I started learning TV Repairs as a teen. Yeah yeah, I was one of THOSE kids who got involved in Electronics at a stupidly young age. So here was my STUPID move.... and I still remember this like it was yesterday, but it was in the mid 1970s.... I was working on a Sears Color portable TV (which, as many may know, was actually a GE chassis and CRT). I got all the major repairs done, but had to do a rebuild on the tuner. Being young and not getting a lot of guidance when needed, my habit at the time was to power on the set to do troubleshooting, then turn it off. Being new to all that, I was very nervous about the high voltage wire to the CRT. So what I'd do, is take a long screw driver, ground it, then stick it under the rubber to discharge the tube. I had the set connected to a coax cable wire that of course, was grounded. I turned on the TV, but all of a sudden, NO PICTURE! As it was on, I realized that SILLY ME, I still had the screw driver... the GROUNDED SCREW DRIVE under the rubber protector on the CRT. Being young, one somethings doesn't think things through. sigh... I had the coax cable/antenna wire in my left hand.. GROUNDED... and then realized the screwdriver was the problem!!!! But instead of pulling the power plug and taking the screw driver out, sigh... bad memory here... I took off the GROUND WIRE that is attached to the screwdriver, AT THE GROUND CONTACT!!! Yes... you got it.... grounded coax in left hand, 28KV in the right hand! The electrocution froze me in place... in a panic, I couldn't move and all I could think of was to just let myself fall backwards to pull the wires out of my hands. Fortunately, that worked! THAT was the shock of my life, literally. Needless to say, I was left with a minor heart problem for the rest of my life.... fortunately, not life threatening. sigh... Lesson learned! The take away never let 28,000 volts course through your body, on hand to the other.... not good.
Get off your high horse (also see 15:04). There's nothing whatsoever noble about breaking yourself at the age of 25 for the sake of an employer who doesn't care for your health!
@@lendoggtheking Idiot, things were different back then, H&S has come a long way, nobody is on a high-horse, it was merely a comment about the way things were. These people would have been happy for the employment chance, people were different back then as well, attitudes were different, production-line work was hard but it was work.
@@dave-j-k In 1947 1725 people where recorded to have died at work, in 2018 it was 144. I wont be lectured by a keyboard warrior, who romanticises a past in which he never worked, about the good old days. Hostility towards health and safety is not harmless chat, it encourages workers, especially young and inexperienced workers who want to prove their mettle to cut corners endangering not only themselves but those around them too. What do you suppose happens to the man who's given himself white finger or who has contracted Siderosis or dermatitis so bad he cant work or even the one who's lost fingers or toes? And for what? To fractionally increase prophets for a company who wont give him a cut and who will drop him like a hot rock the moment he's no longer productive! These workers where so “happy” with their conditions that they joined trade unions in massive numbers and fought hard to enshrine in law the right to work in safety. If there was anything good about the good old days it was that workers used their collective bargaining power as a balance against the power of employers. productivity has been rising for years but real wages for workers have gradually declined since at least the 80's! www.unionhistory.info/britainatwork/narrativedisplay.php?type=healthandsafety www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf
@@lendoggtheking And i'm the one on a high-horse. LOL I was not 'romanticising' anything, I made a comment re the absence of work-aids etc and off you go on a mission - and I'm the keyboard warrior LOL , you just ranted three paragraphs when you needn't have typed a word, absolute epitome of a keyboard warrior. Bye.
As someone young, I am amazed at the level of automation even back then. Attention to quality seems to be much better than today. Back when Britain was great.
It wasn't just Britain. It was like that all over the world.
In the USA, RCA put the highest quality into their design and builds. Precision was paramount as well the highest quality of parts and workmanship.
The RCA color CRT was literally the best on the planet back in the 1950s to early 1970s.
But as time goes on, quality has left the scene for the most part.
The TVs made now are no longer made by the "big guys." They are mostly made in China with low quality parts, bad workmanship and lack of care in design and build.
Panasonic still made good TVs. We have 2 Panasonic TVs, plasma, one is 3D and other than minor repairs, they are flawless.
And as for repairs, the only issues I have had to fix is on the 3D TV, it started to turn itself off after being turned on.
It turns out that this was a good thing! One of the cooling fans stopped spinning and the system detected that, so went into shutdown mode.
That was an easy fix. But I noticed that one of the main power supply caps (a large one) was just beginning to bulge at the top. I replaced that and it's been working fine ever since.
The other Panasonic, not 3D, failed once and that too was just a power supply cap. Easy fix.,
BUT.... I've been through 4 SONY 4K TVS! The first one, that I just use for the computer, was excellent for 2 years and it started to have failing LEDs. That was replaced under warranty with a GARBAGE model. I basically brought that home, connected it, only to find that it has these very thing, PINK super fine hairline marks on the inner layers. I returned that one that day and they gave me another one (this is Best Buy). I get THAT one home (same model) got it all set up only to find that it had an actual CRACK right in the center/bottom of the screen. It was a perfect 1/2 circle! Also, INSIDE the layers!
By this time, the manager of this BestBuy location was involved and he appreciated that I wasn't angry. I explained that I was a TV Repairman long ago, so this kind of thing wasn't new.
The good thing, though, was that for that month, a Sony rep was in the store. We had some chats in private and he admitted that this particular model is known to have problems and he didn't understand why Sony was still sending them out instead of doing a recall on them.
Needless to say, I didn't want a 4th one, so the manager offered me a top of the line model that was like $700 more. I said that was too much for just a "computer monitor". So, he was very cool about it. He gave it to me for cost,which then only cost me $100 more, including another 4 year warranty. LOL
It's been great. Knock on faux wood.
😂😅🤣
14:58 - I see that Percussive Maintenance has been a useful technique for a long time
These older videos were quite informative and professionally presented without hype or drama. One might actually learn from these old videos.
More or less like the How It's Made series in recent years, not clickbait youtube crap that we're getting accustomed to.
Nice to see a British documentary about manufacturing not presented by two overgrown children shouting "COR! WOW!" and "THAT'S AMAZING!" every time a basic fact is patiently explained to them by a bemused line manager...
How I love music in those oldie documentaries, it was so lively and optimistic! Today it sounds like some darn war or catastrophe is going on 24/7 all around the globe, with those dramatic string staccatos, bombastic cymbal crashes and Carmina-Buranesque choirs. The world completely lost its sense of humour, everything became dead serious, even utter nonsense.
I couldn't agree more, TaigaFolk. Those docus are the bee's knees. As for the present-day ongoing tympani-created tension, it's that there ProTools that's making us all feel like we're living on Death's Doorstep. And not Dad's Army.
Does anyone else see the irony of a colour film used to show production of a black and white tv? I just smiled as I remember watching a ‘huge’ 26 inch b&w tv and thinking, “wow”! Great film….
I remember as a kid turning our old set on, you had to wait for it to warm up. Then watched the dot disappear when turning off.
Yes, they took a while to boot up.
@@bingola45 Yeah. B&W valve TVs used to "boot up". I suppose you "powered" them "down" when that bloody minister came on for Late Call (or whatever they had down south). 10-4 Over and out.
@@Ndlanding Roger.
Ahhhh, the dot. I loved the dot. It definately should be re-incorporated into modern sets. Also, bring back the turret tuner!!!
@@stevedoubleu99B We never had a turret tuner for YEARS.
When ITA came out, we got a converter!
Just amazing Tv set manufacturing documentary....Had no idea early 1960's Tv production utilized large Pc boards & such advanced assembly technology....
I was making Tubes for Philips / Mullard in the 80's-90's and I recall using 2 foot piece of 1" plastic hose to hit the screen as hard as possible, to remove particles that can become lodged in the slots of a shadow-mask, behind the screen of the Glass Bulb. Ah memories!.
The said device was referred to as ones _'Hogger'_ - and Hoggering being the act of striking the face of a television :)
Jayc: was that a bit like "bugger", but non-catholic? I seem to remember that Late Call...
if it happened in the customer's home the recommended procedure was to hit the faceplate with a slipper
I worked in a regunning factory in the 90s and we had a pneumatic hammer with a rubber end that would rattle against the glass. If that didn't cut it, out came the fence post and we would slam the tube face with the end of the post. We called it spot knocking. I learnt just how strong the tube faces were 🙂
@@tenmillionvolts We did Spot Knocking too! The plastic hose we used was called a 'Hogger' 😆
@@jayc2469 Do you know why it was called that? We never used that term. I wonder if it was a local thing.
That`s the Spon St works, where i had an interview for an engineering apprenticeship in `77, i was 16. There is a cinema complex there now. When the factory was demolished it exposed walls with huge old advertisments for GEC televisions.My father was in the toolroom at the Stoke plant and my mum was a coilwinder at the Helen St site. All our electrical goods were GEC (if they made them) staff discount and you could have the installments deducted from your pay packet.
My father was working there in 1960
We had an Ekco TV, purchased in 1957 and kept alive untill 1977 when my father finally relented and switch to colour!!
My mother worked there in 1962.
My Nan ,mum , & Aunty all worked there in the 70,s
I have restored many 405 line sets to working order including this model. It has proved to be my most reliable set.
I was very fascinated by this. Thanks for posting. GEC were one of the first firms to use PCBs and many other firms used complete hand wiring with tag boards well into the 60s. I'm surprised how automated the production actually was for the time.
Many manufacturers continued using point to point wiring because there were many problems encountered with early printed circuit boards, such as traces falling off the board, poor solder joints, etc. Zenith was one such company, they employed hand wired chassis right into the 1970s. Other manufacturers used a mix of hand wiring and printed circuits in their chassis, such as they would use P.C boards for the I.F strip, but use hand wiring in the high voltage section, and anywhere they had hot running tubes/valves.
tr 90 for your jazzmen ..... me no 0.01 mf myself prefer car ignition capacitor 0.22 mf. to use in between jack headphone socket to cd or CASSETTE PLAYER BETTER.,.,.,.,.,,,,,,.,.,.,.......PLEASE USE OLD SOLDER FROM NEAR BY......................... dear MR OlegKostoglatov THANK YOU
@@mohammedanwar-zz2ld r/ihadastroke
@@mohammedanwar-zz2ld Someone fell asleep with the phone in their hand, I think! Hope they didn't drop it!
Gosh... the women had a lot of hard work assembling those sets. The repitition must have been head wrecking. When u got home last thing you wanted to do was look at the TV!
Could they even afford a set??
@@agfagaevart no. probably not. the cost would have been prohibitive compared to the wage. It would have taken around one year of wages to pay it off!!
Many people had a TV by the 60s. Don't forget the man would definitely be out working, at a better paid job.
TV sets were also usually rented out, which meant cheaper upgrades, free repairs and cheaper than buying.
This is better than the best tech museum! Gold to my eyes. This is just so fascinating.
Earthlings working together is a Great Achievement
We Do Not Partake In Such Menial Activitys As Football
We Prefer To Create Wonderful Music And Spread It To As Many Worlds As Possible
Stay Safe Earthling
My first job in the late 1960's was making the cabinets for TV and Radiograms,cannot remember GEC but we did, ITT KB and Thorn EMI electronics cabinets for both Radiogram and televisions.
GEC used double sided boards which although common today weren't so much back in the day...I remember repairing the old hybrid Pye colour tv's with a CDA board that used to look like the ocean waves as time went by, due the heat from the 4 valves (3 PCL84's and a PL802)...A company called LEDCO even made a solid state version of the PL802 which wasn't all to reliable!..The old KB (Kolster-Brandes) used hand wired chassis and even had a baby alarm input (State of the art stuff :)
I love how even the young men loading the trucks are wearing suits. People back then had so much pride in how they looked, no matter what the job was. If you met them outside work, you would automatically have respect and kindness towards them
Even the typical "family man" watching television with his family was wearing a suit and tie. My dad used to watch TV wearing a tie. He even tended his allotment wearing a tie.. Actually it was a pain in the arse world full of petty shit. Don't get fooled by nostalgia.
Working in a jacket and tie was horrible. Thanks God those days are gone forever.
@@Gribbo9999 Despite the fact that jeans were "workwear" until later on.
Not sure about the UK, but in the USA, it was common for people to dress up for these demonstration films and for executives to make cameo appearances. I remember one of a guy demonstrating a handicap van and ramp in a 3 piece suit. That said, people did dress better back then, and they fit into whatever clothes they wore better than today.
Fascinating to me as I have never worked in a large company but run my own very small scale electronics manufacturing. Apart from valves (or as we call them, pickled electrodes) the biggest difference between large scale manufacturing now and then is that their board assembly line was custom configured for that particular assembly. These days the machines are robotic, so by simply changing the program and the component carriers you can switch from televisions to phones, or between one model phone and another.
The actual printed circuit (PCB) fabrication process is 100% familiar; I've made and used boards with pretty much that exact same workflow except for punching all the holes in one hit. I hand drilled hundreds of boards as a young lad. The process today is much more sophisticated although the underlying principle is still the same: selective etching of a copper laminated sheet of insulating material. Also the level of automation in the PCB industry is mind boggling. As a consequence I, as now a hobbyist, can get 5 boards made to my computer aided design and delivered from China for about $20.
From China?
You would think that the shipping costs would render such a transaction unaffordable.
There must be some major economy factor involved which mitigates the transport costs.
I wonder what that could be?
@@bingola45 That ~$20 is $2 for the boards and ~$18 for airmail. The question to ask is how can an eBay vendor in CHina sell you a 75 cent gadget with free delivery?
Great video. GEC were ahead of the time.
This is a fascinating document from social, manufacturing, and electronic viewpoints. I pine a little for when devices could be hand-made and comprehended by individuals. I bet there isn't a single person who fully understands every aspect of any modern TV.
Christopher Dudman | Perhaps not "fully", --but I understood them well enough to repair them from 1972 to 2001
Great insight to TV manufacturing. Lot of people lost their jobs when digital and automation came in. Reminds me of the old car manufacturing.
If only I could go back and get a few parts.
I can smell the smoke residue of Chesterfield's while watching this. Nice.
More likely Senior Service or Craven A.
You're never alone with a Strand! My dad loved that ad, broke my heart to tell him it was later reviled as one of the worst ad campaigns ever..
Players Please!
Wild Woodbine (in green packets) for my dad.
Women without tattoos, who'd have thought it. I was two when this was made. Great video.
1960, wow, some pretty advanced manufacturing techniques for the time. Thanks for posting, very fascinating.
Advanced yes. But many factories did not improve their manufacturing techniques into the 1970s and '80s, and used the same practices, hence their decline. And oh yeah, thanks to competition from the Far East.
16:44 Dunno about that mate.
Great i have this on a BVWS DVD , my dream job if I was born in time😮
A great film to see, many thanks for posting this gem. Its wonderful to see the time when England made things in our own factories employing local people. I have owned several GEC TV's over many years and always found them well built & reliable for their time.
I totally agree with you those were the days when each country had manufacturing like this and employed many people. And give reason to go to school to become and engineer to hopefully work in one of these industries. The problem now is corporate greed and politicians that encourage all this to be built off shore. Those were the golden years.
All that careful work and attention, then we just chuck the boxes into the back of the truck!
Lovely shot of Broadgate!...
I'm always torn when watching these films. On the one hand, I worry about what consumerism is doing to the environment; do we really need all this stuff? On the other, seeing the innovative techniques developed by manufacturing engineers is awesome. And it was techniques like the ones seen here that brought the prices of consumer goods like TVs down. I'm also saddened that manufacturing like this left the UK. There is no reason except greed that manufacturing couldn't have stayed in the UK. Frank Phillip's clipped and clear narration just put the cherry on top for me!
No, you don't really need all this stuff! Please, stop buying it!
And with the money you no longer need, you should take a more menial job.
Looking at the layout of the floor in the high up long shots I think that GEC building was in Spon Street. I worked there from 1983 to 1986 (Fourth Floor) but at that time it wasn't producing TV's but Telephone Network Circuits.. I was a Technician there and worked on 2GHz to 19GHz equipment.
Shame there wasn't an outside shot of the building.
I wondered if it was based in Spon Street, now long replaced by the Skydome even though it was a listed building. I remember being bored to death in the apprentice training school that was based in Spon Street in the early 1970s.
So that would have been making system X. Originally the old Rudge cycle factory.
The good old days, when TV and radio manufacturing in this country was in full swing. Labour intensive it may have been, but at least it was employment with jobs.
Tbh.. machines make far more reliable goods!!
Reminded me how much I hated factory work. Sometimes the boredom made the day seem to never end.
Fascinating.
Thank you for the post.
My mate restored one and uses it now and then...The 405 line whistle gets my ears though!
I have one of these; often referred to as the 'bow front'.
Works well enough. A little bit too modern for my taste, though.
I must say that was very therapeutic to watch and listen to!. What geniuses all the team were back then in that factory 60 years ago, how they took great care, and attention to detail was amazing!. Regards.
Very interesting and informative. Thank you for the video upload!!
Unbelievable automation for the time !
Wonderful stuff, such a great view into tech production in the 60''s, TV was the future!
its great how that guy hits the top of the set to try to fix it.... in the factory.....
I also noticed that.
Poor contact of tube pins can be fixed with a good whack.
Stockdale said his daddy spit in the back and whomped it good to get it working again.
We had a two channel GEC similar to these with a sliding door which covered the screen. It's true when people say " They just don't make things like they used to " . GEC was huge when this film was made , they made everything from railway trains to tv sets , radios and cookers to electrical and electronic parts.
All destroyed when GEC management made the catastrophic mistake of divesting itself of all the less exciting profitable sections, turned into Marconi and went all out for the telecom bubble.
Absolutely - a great innovating company destroyed by useless management.
@@MrsZambezi Trying to put Intel Pentium processors into System X exchanges was a total disaster, upgrading the GEC designed processors would have made more sense but they wanted bragging rights of using Pentium chips.
@@MrsZambezi GEC destroyed Plessey also.
I grew up with a rented GEC in my parents' living room in the 70s. Among several repair callouts, I remember one where the power button broke free and disappeared inside the casing - British engineering at its best... eventually my parents bought a Panasonic and never looked back! Also, RF suppression was still rare in the early 70s, causing picture breakup whenever the neighbours used a lawnmower or a motorbike went past.
I'm interested why you have such a low opinion of British engineering. It's also clear you have no understanding of RF suppression, because that has to be applied to whatever creates the interference. It can't be applied to a TV.
@@MrsZambezi It's a 'generation' thing.
'Britain is Shit' was the message taught to the post-war generations, in order to pave the way for pan-European government.
I grew up with it; happily I was one of those who saw through it.
@@MrsZambezi From my experience, the Japanese were just better at putting things together right the first time than any western country. When they started selling radios in the USA, a lot of them sounded like crap and were mediocre in many respects, but they didn't break down. It might be something to do with the corporate structures defined in Western law; companies seem to find it easier to coast on past accomplishments, then pay off their stockholders and leave their creditors holding the bag when they can no longer compete.
@@pcno2832 I still use my 60s Hacker. There never was a reliability problem with British radios. The pocket radios from Hong Kong and Japan sold because they were cheaper.
@@bingola45 Brexit voter no doubt, look at where that's got us.
Back in the days that we actually made things in this country!
You still do! Just not as much as you used to.
Great film!
The all transistor BRC Thorn sets were game changers.
Ah yes, the 3000 /3500 series; used to run as hot as hell as they still used the valve type droppers.
BRC2000 was solid-state and the BRC 3000 was the birth of the chopper power supply...now used in almost everything..
we were still watching 1950's television in 1960. My Dad always bought used tvs. When color tv came out we were probably the last to get one and the color was all messed up because of bad tubes and my dad was color blind. We didnt know it eather. He would ask my mom if the colors were correct, then mess it up anyways because he couldnt tell blue from green.
Old is gold
Very intelligent nation 👍👍👍👍👍
Thank you, loved that video for it kick started some memories of a time not so long ago. Yes indeed, in those days they did indeed have thick circuit boards supported by chassis made of steel not plastic . Sadly, like in all things even with the best components of the times which made up this miracle vhf product came one serious flaw? Those power hungry heat producing vacuum tubes had very short lifespans. as for that b&w single gun picture tube not a problem for it was built to last for sure. No, it produced little heat itself but collectively now we have a serious watts problem here. after tech school opened up a tv repair shop in 71 and vacumm tube sets like those were still everywhere. Now fixing sets like these were fairly easy for most had similar problems. via horz or vert hold problems mostly sometimes some scratchy sound due to the 4.5 mhz osc going off freq due to a leaky tube or bad cap. Now a lot of sets I repaired were sadly, half transistor color sets via (convergence ry.by.gy. nightmares) and many times even with a scope evaluation, and a sams ya would scratch your hair out trying to repair em.
I think this is the British General Electric Company, rather than GE of Schenectady, New York.
Vivid picture truth! now there's a great selling point.
I felt so "up" on watching this that i ran out and bought a GEC telly. Still waiting for it to arrive, but I recognize that it's hard to get non-visually-impaired quality control staff in sexy dresses, so I won't complain yet. I can't wait to see if it's real mahogany or just a veneer.
I worked on TVs in the late 60s and 70s I hated these sets with the sideways boards they were famous for having loose connections!
I laughed when they mentioned on a couple of occasions how reliable the sets were.
I must admit, my first thought when I saw this video was "Those valves really need some sort of restraining clip to hold them in when they're mounted vertically like that."
I worked on some of them as well, but I don't remember much about them. Our first colour TV was a GEC 2041 hybrid. I had still a lot to learn then, and when the TV suddenly developed a dull picture, I was convinced the crt had packed in. It turned out to be the 100K screen grid/ 2nd anode feed resistor which had burned up due to being underrated wattage wise!☺
Good percussive maintenance at 14:59 :)
Thanks a lot for this video !
I wonder what they would have made of today's pick & place machines, and the few humans needed to run an entire plant. A great video though, thanks for sharing!
Nesse tempo as coisas era mais simples e a vida era boa. Abraço! Rio de Janeiro Brazil
I had a GEC (colour) television in the late 70s. It had a Hitachi CRT and it was very reliable. Pity the "smart" whizz-kids in the city of London didn't realise what value they had in the GEC company before selling off all their manufacturing to become "Marconi" and finally destroying the company.
It was GEC Marconi for a very long time, long before its demise. You're correct about Hitachi tubes, the last ranges of GEC TVs were actually badge engineered Hitachi sets.
@@cambridgemart2075 The GEC heavy engineering core side of the business (railways, power plant etc.) had joined up with Alsthom of France to become GEC-Alstom (I think that they had dropped the "H" from the name by then) but then sold all their share to Alstom to concentrate on the small consumer and electronic goods and made a complete pig's ear of it. The GEC brand name was sold to GE of the USA thus ending confusion between the 2 separate companies.
@@MervynPartin There was a very large part of the company involved in aerospace, defence, and space, that was GEC-Marconi's area of speciality and they were in existence well into the 90s, parts of it past 2000.
The GEC-Hitachi factory was at Hirwaun in wales, ostensibly a joint venture but really a way for Hitachi to gain access to the UK by circumventing the import quotas. The late 70's Labour government gave huge grants to foreign companies to build factories in areas of high unemploymemt to keep the jobless figures down. The conservatives that replaced them followed a similar policy
@@kevvywevvywoo Sony also have a factory in Pencoed, South Wales (one of my friends worked there for some time).
Nice vignette of the Industrial Revolution there.
The commentary is BBC Home Service stalwart, Frank Philips. He was a newsreader during the war, and on a Nazi list. He also did voice-overs, especially on cinema newsreels
I don't understand this: "on a Nazi list". Please explain.
@@Ndlanding Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in Germany compiled lists of the names of people to be arrested and imprisoned (or worse) when Britain had been invaded and taken over.
@@6dBperOctave Thanks, 6dB. I guess that's still going on around the world, but now they don't even invade before silencing the journalists. Sad, innit?
Frank Philips was not a journalist. He was a radio announcer. All sort of prominent (and not prominent) people were on the lists to be rounded up if/when the Nazis invaded Britain.
Época inesquecível!
My aunt used to sit on the arm of a chair with her hand at the back of a 17 inch PYE trying to fix the horizontal hold. Being a widow with little money she couldn't afford to have it fixed. Don't think she ever did.. This was in the late 50's....
I Just LOVE This Video. From HOW They Talk And Everything About It. Printed Wiring panels, Ohh, So retro
Wonderful film. A great insight into TV production, using what was the new PCB technology. The double sided print could be a bit of a bugger until you got used to it. The Hurdy Gurdy radio museum has one of these and when I've finished the Bush TV62, I might tackle it next.
Buenas tvs, teles viejas. 😃📺👍
Notice how the narrator says, 'soldering' and not, 'soddering'. USA viewers take note!
Bravo. My dad always said soldering. In Canada they say soldering too,always grates. To hear it.
The Chinese get it all wrong by calling soldering "welding." 🤣
Everything in my home apart from a hidden laptop is from the 50s even tv and my car. Im only 33
We had a GEC TV set when I was a kid.
Minute 3:27 we can see Queen Elizabeth working in the television sets manufacturing in 1960.
😛 Greetings from 🇨🇱 Santiago Chile SouthAmerica
I Love GE .. Nostalgia ..
I don't know about years of trouble free service, I remember repairing them : )
Hot valves and printed boards caused the paxoline boards to carbonate.
Printed boards were better suited to transistors God Bless
It's nice to see that people are working now it's most automated wonder how much jobs have begin lost with this and how much workforces have begin cut down and how much manufacture as begin sent abroad like to China
Por isso eram duráveis, componentes de ótima qualidade e montado por mulheres.👏👏👏👏
Amazing
For many years of viewing pleasure. Quatermass and the pit, and Dr. Who. But then how long did 405 persist when colour came on?
echodelta, I remember we had an Ultra t.v in the early 60s which had a switch for 405 lines and 625 lines, 625 lines was the standard until modern T.Vs without a CRT [tube]
I have one of these, well a BT318 made in 1960. I often wonder if any of its own parts are included somewhere in this video
Nowadays, that entire process is probably done by only 5 people! LOL!
Awesome...
405 line b&w tv. I remember it well but not fondly.
0:45 Back when people put on their Sunday best to go to the living room and watch TV.
that is sooo cool
Quite sophisticated production line for 1960 wonder how long it took to repair The faulty units.GEC went bust after the dot com crash in 2000
In the early 2000s they moved their light bulb factory to Eastern Europe.
I'm sure they're making the same TV my grandma had.
We did not have a colour TV until 1975, my mom kept her money for more important stuff like food and a car. No need for many foodbanks back then, most people knew the value of money back then, unlike today.
Good viewing.
16:40 ....Guy in a suit & tie working the truck loading dock !!
As one can see. The delicate work is meanly done by women.
The old core memories for computers were made in the far East because the women there, with smaller hands, were better at manipulating the thread-like wires and tiny ferrite cores they contained.
Then burly men chuck the TVs into the back of a van.
If this was an American made documentary we'd be subjected to the world "Quality" in every sentence, quality components, Quality materials, Quality Quality control etc, it's like they have to reinforce or remind everyone.
Zenith; "The quality goes in before the name goes on"
@@ZnenTitan "QUALADY".
Back when companies REALLY wanted to make sure you were happy right out of the box, polishing, testing and retesting. Wouldn't it be nice now to not have to return something because it's faulty. At least once every couple of years I always have to return something faulty.
Now they have that little sticker that says "Q.C. Passed" that they stick on everything.
Would love to see what the Chinese version of "quality control" is. I'm sure it's really just weather or not the little sticker got stuck on in the right spot....
We know today that "valve's" should not be touched with bare fingers i.e. gloves should be worn as finger grease will cause them to pop or malfunction ... I have a preamp that uses valves and I learnt quickly not to touch them (expensive Russian replacements)
Otherwise, a very interesting old film.
Bunkum, and it's valves, not valve's.
@@allancopland1768
If you read, I did spell it correctly. My phone auto spell checked it wrong first time - weird.
In regards to clean valves, I know many who think it's crap, but in the audiophile world its always recommended you don't touch them. Even as a kid, I remember the TV repair man wearing gloves when replacing tubes.
It's an issue of uneven heating more than hot spots ... It will change the sound of your amp (whether you notice or not) and will effect the life of your tubes. The oils create cold spots, not hot spots, even worse for the glass as far as breakage and optimal/consistent output. I remember years ago leaving a thumb print on a power amp tube which cracked just days later.
Maybe it is crap and I just had a faulty tube. I must have OCD as I'm always cleaning 😂
@@ProjectOverseer I agree Chris- it's also the same when handling halogen bulbs. Grease from the fingers will shorten their life. Surprised someone of the vintage who uses the word 'bunkum' doesn't understand this. Poppycock!
@@kristianTV1974
Many thanks. Its good to know I'm not the only one to think that keeping Tubes clean for longevity and performance is a good idea 👍
Ex TV repairman myself. Even the valve manufacturers make no mention of gloves. It's all B/S. Audiophiles usually believe anything they are told by their dealer.... who is in the business of making as much money as they can from mythical stuff. Valves do not 'pop or malfunction' if you touch them... that one is for the fairies.
GEC Cutoff in the titles makes it look like GE which is a well known American company. GE stands for General Electric and has no connexion with GEC.
Is the guy hitting the set at 15:00? 😄
He's stealing the consumers job!!
Always worked the bang.
it was a common trick when they used valves and homes were full of nicotine smoke and heated with coal.
I still find it mind boggling that today they moan about traffic pollution so much.
Things were far worse 45-60 years ago.
Yes. That would've caused any connection issues (cold solder joints etc) to show up at least momentarily, leading to that unit not getting packaged but fixed instead
They had a special hammer, called "tube tapper", for this. Tapping the tubes detects crackling issues or microphonic tubes.
I love the smell of ferric chloride in the morning
Hats off to the engineers who had to patiently design those PCBs with stick-on tapes, decades before Altium and all the other computer-aided PCB design tools we take for granted now. Yeah, ferric chloride has a unique aroma. :)
This brings back memories for me. I worked in a printed wiring house while in college.... My dungarees were rotting out from acid exposure every couple of weeks.
Every care and attention apart from the set being transported upside down on the wagon at 16:43
Christ, an open bath of molten leaded solder with no fume extraction, good luck with the birth defects assembly ladies.
I operated a small scale flowsolder machine in tha 1970 making simple games consoles (telefusion engineering) there was no extraction that I can remember the fumes from the flux were strong, and very little training or health and safety.
I agree. It is typical manufacture. Poor people.
good old british industry,RIP.....
Ahh; the glory days of the lethal live chassis! Many a TV servicing engineer had received painful, and sometimes deadly, 250V electric shocks from TV and wireless sets in houses where the live and neutral (now line and neutral) wires were transposed, or where a reversible two pin mains extension connector had been added to the cable. If that had happened, the chassis was at 250V instead of roughly zero. Modern equipment with a live chassis is illegal, for safety reasons.
Yes, I remember that little death trap very well. I was in a house loft, aglining a TV antenna while the 'guvnor' was down stairs shouting "a bit to the left.......hold it there". Holding the aluminium TV antenna in one hand....I stretch over and grabbed a cold water pipe to steady myself. Wham! Truely the most severe electric shock in my entire TV workshop career.
@@hairybear7705 I think that I have you beat. LOL
I started learning TV Repairs as a teen. Yeah yeah, I was one of THOSE kids who got involved in Electronics at a stupidly young age.
So here was my STUPID move.... and I still remember this like it was yesterday, but it was in the mid 1970s....
I was working on a Sears Color portable TV (which, as many may know, was actually a GE chassis and CRT).
I got all the major repairs done, but had to do a rebuild on the tuner.
Being young and not getting a lot of guidance when needed, my habit at the time was to power on the set to do troubleshooting, then turn it off.
Being new to all that, I was very nervous about the high voltage wire to the CRT. So what I'd do, is take a long screw driver, ground it, then stick it under the rubber to discharge the tube.
I had the set connected to a coax cable wire that of course, was grounded.
I turned on the TV, but all of a sudden, NO PICTURE!
As it was on, I realized that SILLY ME, I still had the screw driver... the GROUNDED SCREW DRIVE under the rubber protector on the CRT.
Being young, one somethings doesn't think things through. sigh...
I had the coax cable/antenna wire in my left hand.. GROUNDED... and then realized the screwdriver was the problem!!!!
But instead of pulling the power plug and taking the screw driver out, sigh... bad memory here... I took off the GROUND WIRE that is attached to the screwdriver, AT THE GROUND CONTACT!!!
Yes... you got it.... grounded coax in left hand, 28KV in the right hand!
The electrocution froze me in place... in a panic, I couldn't move and all I could think of was to just let myself fall backwards to pull the wires out of my hands.
Fortunately, that worked!
THAT was the shock of my life, literally. Needless to say, I was left with a minor heart problem for the rest of my life.... fortunately, not life threatening. sigh...
Lesson learned!
The take away never let 28,000 volts course through your body, on hand to the other.... not good.
That is one UGLY television! How times have changed.
No lifting aids, no tool suspension reels, minimum protection, maximum employment. Great video BTW.
Get off your high horse (also see 15:04). There's nothing whatsoever noble about breaking yourself at the age of 25 for the sake of an employer who doesn't care for your health!
@@lendoggtheking Idiot, things were different back then, H&S has come a long way, nobody is on a high-horse, it was merely a comment about the way things were. These people would have been happy for the employment chance, people were different back then as well, attitudes were different, production-line work was hard but it was work.
@@dave-j-k In 1947 1725 people where recorded to have died at work, in 2018 it was 144. I wont be lectured by a keyboard warrior, who romanticises a past in which he never worked, about the good old days.
Hostility towards health and safety is not harmless chat, it encourages workers, especially young and inexperienced workers who want to prove their mettle to cut corners endangering not only themselves but those around them too. What do you suppose happens to the man who's given himself white finger or who has contracted Siderosis or dermatitis so bad he cant work or even the one who's lost fingers or toes? And for what? To fractionally increase prophets for a company who wont give him a cut and who will drop him like a hot rock the moment he's no longer productive!
These workers where so “happy” with their conditions that they joined trade unions in massive numbers and fought hard to enshrine in law the right to work in safety. If there was anything good about the good old days it was that workers used their collective bargaining power as a balance against the power of employers. productivity has been rising for years but real wages for workers have gradually declined since at least the 80's!
www.unionhistory.info/britainatwork/narrativedisplay.php?type=healthandsafety
www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/pdf/fatalinjuries.pdf
@@lendoggtheking And i'm the one on a high-horse. LOL
I was not 'romanticising' anything, I made a comment re the absence of work-aids etc and off you go on a mission - and I'm the keyboard warrior LOL , you just ranted three paragraphs when you needn't have typed a word, absolute epitome of a keyboard warrior. Bye.
The narrator specifically mentions that the sets are not lifted by hand and there are many areas where it shows lifting aids.