A Potted History of some famous UK Radio
Manufacturers
Bush
Shepherds Bush in London, suggested the
name for a new radio company founded there in 1932. The company
was formed as a subsidiary to the Gaumont British Picture Corporation
after the ex-MD of the recently defunct Graham Amplion loudspeaker
company had explained to the former's bosses that the Cinema industry
was going to be associated with Television in a big way sooner
rather than later. The way into TV, he explained, was through
Radio and the first step was to set up a small radio design and
manufacturing business so work started with a small band of men
and women upstairs in one of Gaumont's factories.
1951 advertisement
Because of restrictions
and protectiveness in the industry, Bush had to set up a chain
of appointed dealers outside the "Radio Wholesalers Federation"
but quickly sold 4000 of their first offering, a small 3-valve
AC table model radio at their list price of £11. Having
such a strong backing was useful as marketing was helped along
by the Gaumont chain advertising and displaying Bush receivers
in their cinema foyers. I don't remember the radios but I do remember
that Gaumont cinemas had a big pool of goldfish in their foyers,
at least I remember the one in our local picture house, after
the war in Allerton, Liverpool.
Another boost to sales happened in 1935
when every Gaumont cinema hooked up a Bush radio and relayed King
George V's Jubilee speech to audiences, reckoned to be about a
million. This was accompanied by a major Bush Dealer's advertising
campaign resulting in the Bush factory expanding over the road
and then to new premises in Chiswick. By 1939 the workforce had
grown to nearly 700, but in the thirties Bush had been known for
reliability and quality performance rather than eye-catching design
and this probably restricted their growth. Post war advertisements
continued to stress quality and carried pictures of Christopher
Stone who, it was said, portrayed a rather stuffy image compared
with other manufacturers advertisements. The slightly stuffy image
was perhaps compounded by what Bush called "Bi-Focal Tone".
This was nothing to do with Mr.Stones spectacles, but was merely
an arrangement of a resistor or two to reduce gain and provide
negative feedback to improve the linearity of audio reproduction.
The fact that the name Bush is nowadays associated with Rank is
due entirely to its film industry origin, in fact J Arthur Rank
took a keen, hands- on interest in Bush after his company absorbed
Gaumont in 1945 and so after the war Bush continued to expand,
initially into additional premises in London, and then in 1949,
into a new factory in Plymouth. There, television later joined
radio production stretching the size of the new factory tenfold
to 400,000 square feet.
In 1962, Murphy another big name, was looking for a buyer and
after an initial approach by Thorn, sold out to Rank. Bush now
became "Rank Bush Murphy" with its new J Arthur Rank
logo.
This
snap was taken in the Bush radio laboratory in 1934.
The young man on the left is Charles
Gant, the father of Linda Irwin who kindly provided it to add
a touch of authenticity to my Bush history jottings.
The chap on the right may be the Chief
Engineer.. does anyone recognise him?
The valves on the RHS of the picture
(VP4 etc?) give a clue to the model of radio on the bench (suggestions?).
Left of centre appears to be a wobbulator and on the right maybe
a bridge for capacitance measurement and of course a ubiquitous
AVO which hasn't changed much in nearly 70 years. Clearly a good
design!
Read more histories>>