Re: [Amps] Tubes, made in the USA, in the olden days; Films?

["pfizenmayer" <pfizenmayer2@q.com>]

I was asked to send this to the reflector so here 'tis. Maybe it will bring 
an old tube maker out of the woods to refresh my memory.

Sometime in the late 50's or early 60's I was in a Ham club in
Cincinnati and one of the club members arranged a tour at about
8 pm at the old RCA tube plant in a suburb of Cincy. There were something
like a thousand women all sitting at stations welding grids or filaments or
plates to the 7 or 9 pin glass bases. The grids were wound amd welded
automatically on the two support wires in about 2 foot lengths , then
another machine cut them into proper lengths. After the tube innards were
assembled , a semi automatic machine took the glass base assembly with the 
pins already set and started heating with gas flames while the glass 
envelope with a stem on it dropped down - all rotating - the machine itself 
was circular and I recall probably something like 30 or 40 locations turning 
and getting the glass hot enough to fuse together. Then the base area was 
cooled a bit and they pulled a vacuum on the stem of the envelope and heated 
the tube and twisted it off to seal it .

To me that was all pretty interesting , but what blew me away was racks of
thousands of tubes like 6AU6's or 12AX7s all plugged in with filaments
really bright and the plates red - as I recall that was a part of the
de-gassing of the assembly and forming/activating of the filament coating.
I cannot remember if the rectangular getter was fired before or after that
step .My recollection is that a 12 volt tube was run at 24 volts for almost 
24 hours.

Thats about all this old fogey remembers - and I can no longer remember the
name or call of the guy who worked there . It was a little crazy in some
ways - lots of hooting and hollering by the gals at the visitors -guess the 
night shift did not get many visitor tours and there were only some ten or 
so guys who worked there on night shift with something like a thousand or 
more women .

73 de hank K7HP


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