I thought there might be some interest in this UK made BP426 portable from the Perivale factory in about 1946 / 47
It originally used a 2 V accumulator for the filament voltage, which I replaced with a 2V lead acid battery, as used with remote controlled cars and such.
Restoration was straightforward with very good shop info. being available.
Condition is more or less 'as found' after a clean-up.
Judging by Zenith 5G500 (should be similar inside), not too bad. A little crowded, but, with the sole exception of removing that omnipresent twistlock, it is not your 38-690 RF chassis recap.
People who do not drink, do not smoke, do not eat red meat will one day feel really stupid lying there and dying from nothing.
Thanks for the replies - I did end up replacing all the capacitors - there are not so many and it was actually easier than some, like the Zenith portables. It uses full sized Octal tubes with painted-on shielding. Which is interesting if you consider that in the US Philco were making farm radios like the 46-132 at the same time that had the much more compact Loctals.
Chris;
Were those Mazda brand tubes/valves with the spray shield coating or Cossor? I don't think that Mullard (Phillips) made battery tube like that with octal bases, they did make some AC tubes that way as some Pye models used them. I have yet to acquire a British Philco, but have been studying what I could of them online, the closest I came was a People's Set (I think) about 20 years ago. I have noticed that they, much like Canadian Philcos, used a mix of imported U.S, and domestic made parts, and materials.
Regards
Arran
Hi - in answer to Arran's question, the valves / tubes are all branded Mazda. Other components also seem to have been sourced locally - e.g. UK made Hunts and Plessey Capacitors.
As I remember, Mazda was initially Edison/GE brand of a lighbulb and had nothing to do with the Japanese cars
It was inspired by Zoroastrian God, Ahura-Mazda, who was bringing light into the world, or something of that sort.
People who do not drink, do not smoke, do not eat red meat will one day feel really stupid lying there and dying from nothing.
Mike;
I seem to recall that the "Mazda" name was applied to marketing tungsten filament lightbulbs, as opposed to carbon filament bulbs, which were much dimmer. I'm not sure when G.E dropped the use of the "Mazda" name, but likely in the 1920s. The Mazda name was applied to tubes/valves manufactured by Ediswan, which originated from the Edison and Swan Electric Lamp company, I'm guessing that the Mazda name with that company also coincided with the advent of tungsten filament light bulbs.
I can remember a French class in junior high school where the teacher ran a video of French (from France not Quebec) T.V commercials, and one was for "C" cell batteries marketed under the "Mazda" name, and the teacher wondered if it had anything to do with the Japanese cars? I can remember remarking that I believed that it didn't, likely seeing that name associated with an old ad for flashlights. I'm not sure why the Japanese cars were given that name, it's not the name of the company, but it apparently debut on a three wheeled delivery vehicle prior to WW2.
Regards
Arran
There does seem to have been another company involved with Mazda as well :
Looking at the 1939 tube datasheet (for the TP25 oscillator mixer), there is a footnote that "Mazda Radio Valves are manufactured in Great Britain by the British Thompson Houston Company of London and Rugby and distributed by the Edison Swan Electric. Co. of Charing Cross London."
BTH were a big operation in their own right back in the day and involved in all kinds of electrical engineering.
Any pix of the insides and the schematics would be welcome.
Portable radios became popular in the summer of 1938 when Sylvania introdued a range of tubes with 1.5V filaments (actually 1.4V) and octal bases, including the 1A7 Convertor, 1N5 IF tube, 1H5, Diode / triode detector / 1st AF Amp and the 1A5 output tube.
Ahura Mazda was the name of the god of harmony and wisdom, that created the universe in the Zoroastrian religion which had its beginnings in Persia.
Mazda Cars were manufactured by Toyo Kogyo, founded in 1920 as a cork company, then purchased by Jujiro Matsuda whose surname has Mazda as a root. Toyo Kogyo started manufacturing cars in 1931 and was a major armament supplier to Imperial Japan during WWII
"Do Justly, love Mercy and walk humbly with your God"- Micah 6:8
"Let us begin to do good"- St. Francis
>>Toyo Kogyo started manufacturing cars in 1931 and was a major armament supplier to Imperial Japan during WWII
So was Mitsubishi (their Zeros were excellent planes). Or Mitsui. Of which parts were Toyota, Toshiba, Suntory brewing. All employed POWs.
And what's left to say of German Porsche, VW, Mersedes, BMW - all worked for the militaries. Mersedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart proudly display all the planes motors that they built for Me109.
An Verner Von Braun put man on the Moon. After successfully having shown the Brits the originally intended usage of his rockets.
Yeah. Interesting thing it is, History of the World, Part Zero.
People who do not drink, do not smoke, do not eat red meat will one day feel really stupid lying there and dying from nothing.
Chris:
B.T.H was the British subsidiary of the General Electric Company (in U.S and Canada not to be confused with G.E.C) so that would in part explain why they were manufacturing tubes for Ediswan, and why Ediswan was marketing them under the "Mazda" trade name. General Electric also developed both metal, and octal based tubes, which were introduced by RCA for 1936, so there is a tie in there as well. It's sort of an oddity of history that in Europe, and Britain, spray shield tubes were almost the norm, but metal tubes were the exception, I believe that Germany and the USSR were they only one that manufactured them on scale, the latter licensed from the U.S. Maybe Italy did as well, not certain, though they did use American type tubes in many of their sets, apparently Magneti Marelli got a license from American Bosch to produce Bosch sets in the late 1920s.
One company that used North American tube types almost exclusively was Kolster-Brandes, a K-B is one of the handful of British built sets I own, they were owned by Standard Telephone and Cables, which was a division of International Telephone and Telegraph. This makes it easy to find replacement tubes, as opposed to an HMV or a Cossor, where they used tubes/valves with their own system of numbering, sometimes with different pin outs. I also have a Bush DAC90A, and it uses rimlock tubes of the Phillips/Mullard pattern, not impossible to find thanks to Phillips being a major manufacturer in many countries, but unlike for the K.B I don't have boxes of spares like 6SK7s or 6V6s.
Regards
Arran
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