RCA Tube Manufacturing In Lancaster PA (1966)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 2 พ.ย. 2021
- A truly one of a kind reel from my collection, this one I picked up in a second hand shop in Lancaster County back around 1993 and it is a training film made in 1966 just for a single production stage at the massive RCA Vacuum Tube Manufacturing Plant that was the major employer in Lancaster at that time. I determined the year based on the date code on the Kodak film stock, and this reel was transferred from my own 16mm archive print using my Eiki Telecine. The Eiki projects a 24fps print at 30 frames per second for a flickerless NTSC transfer. A special diffusion plate eliminates the 'hot spot' of the projector, and the sound is pulled right from the optical track. Enjoy!
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My parents worked there on the assembly line from 1978 until it closed. We moved from Maryland for those jobs. We lived in the townhouse rentals right next to the plant so they could walk to work. The jobs paid 2 times what they were making before. We were able to eventually afford a car and many things that we had to do without before. My dad would bring home rejected parts for me to play. It was what got me interested in eventually getting my engineering degree. They still live in Lancaster, but in a townhouse they bought with the money saved, mostly from working at the plant. That plant changed the lives of everyone in my family.
Is Lancaster the place where they have Amish?
@@louistournas120 yes it is
And I will say that the RCA plant I stepped into in 1968 changed my life!
@@glee21012 Hardly. It's true that organized labor in America has been on the back foot for half a century now, but if you think they only benefit "incompetent" workers, look at the job security of the majority of American workers who aren't in a union.
Someone wrote, the inhumanity of capitalism and it was deleted?
The young woman with short hair and pretty smile might have been around 20-25 years old at the time of filming (1966); that was 55 years ago as of the present (2021), so she may be around 75-80 years old and still alive today. Wonder if she has seen this footage, and how far technology has come. Where will we be in the next 50 years...
I too am wondering if she's alive and shall watch this video on the TH-cam.. 👌👍
De VU2RZA
Even though I don't use vacuum tubes myself I know it's responsible for the tech we have nowadays. I appreciate all the work these young ladies put in. I hope they were not put in danger with the fumes produced by the materials they used.
@@Twit.Tw00 ... and still today (tube amps).
Can we find out where she is by posting request on Facebook or other social media? Let's find out. I fell in love with the girl. Someone wants to do that for us?
Not to mention the hot cathode.
*Kids today will never know the glow, buzz and smell of vacuum tubes in the back of a radio or television set...*
I worked at RCA in Lancaster "evacuating" tubes after graduating high school in 1966-68. This film sure brings back memories.
That’s fascinating! Would you remember the type of tubes, by chance? I might have some of them.
I did security there after they got bought out, and got to know a few people working there.
Thanks for your services that brought us nice moments anywhere in the world.
When my DaD worked at RCA he invented a dielectric spacer with countersunk holes that aligned and insulated the three legs of transistors for soldering onto circuit boards. Before the invention workers threaded individual insulation tubes to each leg. The patent was owned by RCA and I still have it framed in my garage.
Thanks for sharing!
@Gene Smith, I hope your dad was rewarded well for his patent!
That's cool. I know exactly the spacer you're talking about! Still use them every now and then.
@@jmikronis7376 Typically, when you work for a company and get a patent, the company pays you one dollar. The patent comes from work that you are paid to do, and the company owns what you do while they are paying you. I collected a few bucks that way. I literally got a dollar bill in an envelope for each patent. It's some weird legal thing. You can also put patents on your resume, so there's that.
@@incognitotorpedo42 Glad that improved! I worked at this plant through it’s transition of many owners. I didn’t work in the tube division. I have 12 patents, and although I received a little more than $1 for them, the concept is still the same. They buy the patent from you for a token amount of money.
It's surprising how much of this line involves manual operations as late as 1966. No safety glasses, almost no fume and dust extraction - it really looks like a cottage industry, yet is was RCA.
@@gabrielueta6908 Still, unacceptable levels of exposure to various hazards. An advertisement for why OSHA was one of the Federal government's better organizations.
@@antonmoric1469 Well, live and learn (or in this case, die and learn).
That's because the ladies are making 2E24 tubes. The type 2E24 was a specialised VHF transmitting tube (for taxi 2-ways and the like) for which only low quantities were needed even during its peak usage in the 1940's. By 1966 it was made completely obsolete by the first generation of transmitting transistors, and RCA would have been turning out very small quantities for replacement in old equipment.
@@keithammleter3824 Doesn't make sense for them to make a training fl for an obselete process. The processes look barely removed from the original lab methods.But capitalism is graded on the curve, they don't need to be anymore efficient than their competitors
Well, if you look at footage of production of Mullard for example from the same era, totally different story compared to RCA.
This factory is still standing, I was there in 2019. It's used as warehouse now, the nearby car dealership uses their parking for overflow. I forget what I delivered there, but I did Park there overnight. I would describe its current condition as " fallout 3"
Did you deliver the platinum chip to Mr House? :D
@@KeritechElectronics Hard to believe that just thirty years ago there was over thirty CHIP MAKERS in the world. Today something couple. What a different America we live in these days.
@@victoryfirst2878 same with vacuum tube manufacturers, there used to be tens or even hundreds of them (I know of five in Poland, there might have been more), and now? Only a handful remained, not counting a bunch geeks (like Glasslinger or Aleksander Zawada) who learned the thing, laid their hands on vacuum technology and set up their labs for making experimental tubes.
@@KeritechElectronics Point well taken Sir.
I don't know if you're talking about Burle Industries....but the RCA campus is leased out to lots of different companies, and is very active.
My aunt started out working in that factory but ended up working in transistor plant later on. She retired very well, passed away 104 years of age. Wonderful lady.
Well wow. The speed of the woman at the solder station!
Tubes. Asbestos and lead. Women with perms, pearls, and cateye glasses.
Trippy.
Perhaps the women dressed up special knowing that they would be filmed that day, or week. Perhaps management told them to?
@@goodun2974 - Likely both. The filming setup would have taken quite a while, and they were probably encouraged to dress nicely for the demonstrations. Their normal clothing was probably just a bit less fancy, and had heavy aprons.
Ah, those were the days. The old octal-based valves like the 6SN7 and 807 were where I cut my teeth. Then those new-fangled transistor things arrived and, before you knew it, we now have billions of them on a single die! The only constant in life is change.
I built a regenerative short wave receiver with a 6SN7 and 6V6 in the late 80s!🤓
It also depends on the time period. For a long while, people made stone tools, stone axes, stone spearheads and living in caves and temporary places. For a long while, it was copper tools, copper knives.Then it was bronze tools. You had king and queens and related people living in castles.
It looks like around 1700, with the advancement of telescopes, the discovery of a few elements, things started to advanced.
By the 1800s, science accelerated.
The vacuum tube era didn't last long.
The IC advancement seems to have slowed down but perhaps there will be a sudden jump soon.
@@louistournas120 "The vacuum tube era didn't last long." but still not totally gone, for sound amplifiers ...
These were the days that America was the land of opportunity. We made quality things that the whole world trusted and respected our items for sale. I am so glad that I lived through most of those times. This film really takes me back in time.
@@victoryfirst2878 They obey the rules of capitalism, which is to maximize profit.
1. To maximize profit, you have to reduce the value of the currency of another country. I would like to know why countries decided to devalue their own money with respect to the currency of the USA or Canada or France.
2. You need the government to make rules about exporting and importing. This way, you can export your factory to the other country. This requires friendship between a CEO and the president or minister.
The both get something out of writing such a rule.
The worker class doesn't get involved. He is not invited to the meetings.
3. They manufacture or program or whatever the job is in the cheaper country and they import it to the USA or equivalent, thus making a lot of profit.
You need a cooperation between the CEO and president or minister, so that the country does not block you from importing.
4. Not every job can be exported: A barber, dentist, doctor, nurses, street sweaper, house construction, restaurant jobs, car repair.
Thanks for sharing the footage Fran!
I was 100% sure to find a comment from the one and only Mr. Carlson on this video. :) Nice to meet you here.
Hi, Mr. Carlson! :-)
I see you are hanging around this film :). Those were the day for sure
☝😉What Mr. Carlson said.
Thank you for taking us into your lab Mr Carlson!
Amazed at how dressed up they got. Wonder the one young lady might be still around guessing 85
I worked a summer job in that Lancaster plant in 1971, welding spring clips onto the shadow masks for 25-inch picture tubes. Though I was there only a short time, it was apparent RCA was moving away from consumer products toward more profitable NASA and military work. Soon after we were all buying TVs made in Japan.
RCA continued to make TV's in the USA, but only in Bloomington Indiana. Their smaller ones, from 15in or less, came from Taiwan. I think it was overall, a move away from tube technology to solid-state where that plant met it's demise.
@@audvidgeek I work for a company that was completely vertically integrated from start to finish when I was hired. They closed plant after plant after section because profitable does not always mean profitable enough. Now we are left with the parts that physical can not be moved or are so undesirable that the NIMBYs of the world will never allow it to be replicated anyplace else. It bothers me that profitable can be trumped by just making a bit more money closing up selling off or moving away....
When no one is left working no one will buy any of the products....
@@nos9341 They just do not understand that point fella.
@@victoryfirst2878 which is how China managed to grab the Worlds floating capital so easily.
@@Mercmad Right on fella.
RCA was at one time big corporation. Down here in South Florida in Palm Beach Gardens, RCA had a manufacturing facility until company moved from there. One of the main streets is named RCA Blvd.
*I've been looking for this (or similar) footage for quite a while, thank you so much!* In 1970 or so my high school class went on a field trip to the RCA tube plant in Harrison, NJ. I was in hog heaven! The buildings were very old, they were purchased from Edison at time unknown but they dated from the 1880's-1890's. They had rough plank floors, just 3 x 12 x 20 laid across beams, classic brick bldgs about 3 stories tall. There they had these same tube making carousels you show, and if you like mechanical stuff, these were just fantastic machines. They were 6-8 feet in diameter, they were chain driven, and had 25-40 stations around the perimeter. They were making all-glass novar, noval tubes. A base would drop down from a stack and starting at station 1 these tiny mechanical fingers would come out and start to spot weld little tiny bits of metal that would become the tube elements. The carousel would pause and then every 15-20 seconds or so, KA CHUNK, the thing would rotate to the next station. Gradually the innards of the tubes were built up, a heater would be dropped in, the micas dropped on....then a glass piece like a upside down champagne flute would drop over the assembly and the whole thing would rotate under nat gas flames and seal it up. Pull the vacuum and flame the exit tube and seal it up. The getter was a little pea-sized ball of barium wool and would flash under an induction heater coil. If you like tubes or machines, it was absolutely fascinating, although without a doubt, if you had to spend the whole day watching these machines ka chunk ka chunk ka chunk it would drive you completely batty.
What is more impressive would be talking to the guys who designed this stuff. The triumphs and failures while doing so until they got the process right. Then it was the ability to mass produce the valves! America really was the manufacturing king of the planet back then.
Thanks for sharing your experience!
@@bobolulu7615, yep, you don’t see the failures of attempts of machines prior to the successful ones. Those engineers were always in time constraints due to war efforts.
Everyone was doing their job to produce these tubes in a timely fashion.
After the wars, the efforts became focused on creating disposable goods as cheaply as possible.
1:43 The pixie haircut gal is a dream! Back in 1966 cuddling with her on the couch and watching the premiere of "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" would be a memory to last a lifetime. This video is FANTASTIC, thanks!
Yes! She is a real qt-π
The girl with pixie cut near the end is cute, tho she could easily be my mom
Ah, the days of working over a smoldering pot of molten solder. That's a great fun film!
No RoHS too, so lead fumes to boot!
A excellent video Fran, The dexterity of the woman is amazing (magnitudes above us mere men) It reminded me of 1969 for myself and wife. The plant I worked at was a glass plant I was in the pyrometry department and my good lady worked the afternoon shift in the Diode tube cutting department whilst pregnant with number two son. We would pass at the gate, me exiting she coming in. A pause for a kiss and I saw her again at eleven pm. Thank you for the time travel. Keep up the good work.
Women were employed to wire the intricate core memory units of the Apollo guidance computers. It was like knitting a brain.
these are the kinds of things that nobody really thinks to record at the time but is so great to have documented in the future. thank you for the insightful commentary Fran!
I worked in a factory back in the 60s that made filters, air dyers and brass fittings. I wish I'd taken pictures. I was there 5 years until it closed, starting part time in HS. It was a great job with a lot of nice people. They were like family. Lots of older women as seen here worked in the place as well as many men. I think t was around 50-50.
Fran, I'm really enjoying these film transfers, and I especially appreciated your monologue with this one. Keep it up!
Fran, I really liked your narration style! Please do more like this. Even non-silent-movie voice overs explaining old industrial films would be great.
Fran, it is a pleasure to listen to your depth of knowledge as you speak extemporaneously on various topics. Thank you.
A now diseased friend was an engineer at the Lancaster RCA facility for many years. Way back in 1964 he told me about work being on TV sets that would have humongous screens yet skinny enough to hang on a wall.
I worked at a plant that made tubes 6 feet tall. There were presses that stamped an 8 inch bowl out of a 1/4 inch copper plate. I think these bowls were the contacts at the bottom... IDK, I was up on the roof mostly changing belts on 100's of AC units.
That picture of the lady with short hair, very pretty.!!
This is so enlightening! My Grandfather (David Dale VanOrmer) help RCA invent/develop the RCA Color Picture Tube at the Lancaster Plant. Never knew HOW they were manufactured. AWESOME!
That smile was amazing! It would be awesome if that woman is still alive and sees this.
I went to a vocational high school and took 4 years of electronics between 1958 and 62, just at the cusp of the solid-state era, So my training was strictly vacuum tubes, How excited I was every year when the RCA Vacuum Tube manual and the new Allied Radio catalog came out. I stayed in the electronic field all my working career. I worked for one of the Baby Bells as a central office switchman/later Technician and got all my solid-state training attending Bell System classes. I worked on the original 24 channel T1 carrier systems. I swear you could cook an egg inside a 50L6 P-P amplifier housing
Astoundingly good quality film transfer, Fran. I'd love to see how you do it.
This is her setup th-cam.com/users/postUgkx9aZhPBcru6vJJIBCvhKBhq_JpNcTTCyc
Yes, a video of you transferring a film would be nice.
Probably had it done professionally, unless she has an expensive scanner. This looks a little more compressed than what I’ve seen from 16mm though.
She commented on her Community tab here on TH-cam a few days ago: "Got my Eiki Telecine set up and several boxes of films to transfer this fall. The projector has a 6 blade shutter which projects 24 fps films at 30 frames per second to sync with NTSC video. It also has a special glass diffuser to eliminate the hot spot from the bulb, and direct output optical sound."
@@jonoghue Thanks now I know JON
Hi Fran,
Love these old factory films. I still have a lot of tunes stored away from my days rebuilding audio amplifiers and control centers for juke boxes. These women were at risk doing these jobs and I'll bet they didn't know how dangerous it was. Nothing like the smell of lead and asbestos in the morning... Thanks for posting this.
I worked at Radio Shack when I was 15 & 16 in 1978-79, and we were one of the only sources for tubes in the area. Saturday mornings were big tube days. One of my co-workers was a retired RCA engineer and when people would bring in a tube for testing, he would give us all the complete history of the tube and what it was best used for.
1.38 I like how she is wearing strings of pearls at a manufacturing job. I wonder if she got dressed up because she knew she was going to be famous some day in Frans video.
There is still a place for vacuum tubes, in radio, in audio. It would be a crying shame to loose them. Having said that I also love semiconductors. Each has a place in my heart.
Oh man. Modern OSHA would have a conniption fit. Thanks for this, Fran.
Osha sure has come a long way. Now they are overseeing mandates for experimental toxic injections.
Land of lead and asbestos? I bet there's more asbestos than lead here; I'd rather it be the other way round. Been there, done that for a few years in a lead type foundry.
Great little movie, I wish you had more of them! And I absolutely love your commentary.
Solder fumes aren't as toxic as people think, as soldering temperatures are nowhere near the boiling poiint of lead. Rosin flux fumes can be moderately irritating but again likely not particularly toxic. Wearing gloves and washing hands would likely prevent lead exposure. Asbestors fibers, on the other hand, well....oh, BTW, the organic acid fluxes used for leadfree solder are nasty, and the soldering temps are necessarily higher.
@@goodun2974 exactly! It's also a common myth related to typecasting: that lead fumes are toxic. Not quite so, compared to decomposing mould oil if you use a Monotype casting machine where the mould is placed directly over the melting pot. If the oil is dripping, it'll land right on the molten metal, decompose and burn down, giving off a lot of nasty fumes.
Asbestos is only dangerous if you grind it up and breath in all the fibres for many months day in and day out. In its static condition it poses no health risk.
I was 11 when this was made in 1966. Vacuum tubes were used in everything except transistor radios and some of the newer car radios. About 4 times a year a tv repairman had to come out to repair the tv. My parents had a 1954 Pontiac with a vacuum tube radio. You always had be sure to turn off the car radio after shutting off the car otherwise the car battery would go dead. Thanks so much for posting this. I first became fascinated with tube technology from using tube guitar amps.
1966... Gosh that was not that long a time ago... how fast technology has moved us along!
Any nostalgia, it takes me back to the mid 60's when I started my working life on the production line at Marconi's in the UK. They made crystals and crystal based products.
Love these history lessons! Please keep them coming!
As for the gloves worn by these workers, not all of them would have been made of asbestos. Only those working the high temp equipment would have needed them. Most others probably wore thick cotton gloves to protect their hands in case a tube would shatter while being handled.
My Mom worked in that department the same time this was filmed. Wished I would have caught a glimpse of her. I loved it when she'd come home and talk about work while having a cup of coffee.
Wow what an education. This video is one year older than me!! It really is mind blowing how things have "progressed" in such a short time. Not just in tech, but in the feel of how life was.
Thanks Fran for sharing your work and passion with us.
I was fifteen and my job was to “fix the TV” I would get behind the set and look for one with no red glow at the bottom .
. We would take the dead tube to the Rexall store where they had a tester to check it , and a list of tubes to buy and how much. The nice lady behind the counter would come out and unlock a cabinet full of tubes and we would tell her what we needed. They also had free tube numbering cards with sticky duplicate stickers to mark the tube and it’s socket so a bunch of tubes could be tested at the same time with some hope of doing it correctly.
Fecenating film. I had a friend who passed recently and she worked in a factory here in Britain called Welwyn Electric ,in the60s 70s, 80s she was on a line called wire wound making resistors I would imagine from how she described it the conditions would have been similar and strangely it was all ladys that she worked with 😀
Wish that this was still in operation. Tube stereos rock the house down. The sound is a much better quality. Crisp, clean, and powerful and not that Dolby trash. I have a tube set but very hard to get blown tubes. Thanks Fran. This is cool stuff.
agreed. I still run a tube preamp and power amp also have a hybrid itegrated with tube preamp stage and solid state output stage. Can't beat tube equipment for lifelike music reproduction.
Thanks for that Fran. Many will benefit from this. Manufacturing in the US. What a concept. We used to be the world leader. Now we can't make anything.
It just occurred to me - I was almost named Francis. I honestly don't know which would have been worse - being Fran after my grandmother or what I got stuck with. No knock on being named Fran - it just isn't me. Ralph, maybe...🤣 Or Sven...But Robert???
At 3:29, there's a little counting machine attached to the soldering table. It has a handle with a little hole at its end. My dad brought a couple of those home when I was a little kid, and I spent many hours clicking it, watching the numbers go up one by one, and then resetting it to all zeros via the little round knob that's facing the camera. I'm 70 now, and a wave of nostalgia has just washed over me. Thanks for this, Fran.
This is so great. I’ve lived in Lancaster since ‘95. It has quite the history. Thanks
Interesting film. Excellent and informative commentary. Looks like the workers wore their Sunday best for the filming. The person soldering the caps has that embarrassed smile and quick glances at the camera typical of someone not entirely comfortable with being filmed.
Nice touch to wear pearls to work in a factory ;-)
My life in electronics began with tubes back in the 50's and 60's building Allied Radio and Lafayette kits as a young boy. Went on in later years seeing the advent of solid state and worked in the electronics career field in the US Air Force. Enjoyed the video, thanks.
So labor intensive. Also can't help but think about all those chemicals these women are being exposed to on a daily basis for probably better than minimum wages.
Thanks Fran, great narration! 👍
We used to wash our reworked boards in a tank with big lid and sprayer filled with Methyl ethyl ketone (probably) and no exhaust fans. It didn't affect me, affect me, affect mee...
The ladies look very careful in what they are doing! Amazing documentary. Thanks for uploading!
The ladies are all wearing their best for the camera and their hair is done, one was even wearing a pearl necklace! Lovely to see those times again, reminds me of my old mum, really high personal standards people had then. :)
we had an "R.C.A." tube plant in cincinnati ohio.( madisonville ) it closed in 1976 due to a union contract that had expired, and the workers threatened to go out on strike. R.C.A. told the workers that if they went out on strike, the plant would be shut down. the workers voted to strike, and R.C.A. closed the plant!!!!.( I am sure that this was a calculated move on R.C.A.'s part being that tube sales were on the decline) I knew many "MOMS" that worked at that plant!!! being that I am in electronics, this film really hits home!!! thanks for posting this film!!! most people do not realize what it really takes to produce top quality vacuum tubes, with many years of trouble free service!!! after the tubes are built, they then go to the "TESTING/GRADING" section of the plant. R.C.A. had strict quality control, and for tubes that did not meet standards were pulled and destroyed, the rest of them got graded as to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd pick tubes
I did exactly the same thing when I was over in Germany using my Sony 8mm camcorder to use as a training video for operators here in Scotland. The interesting thing I discovered was that near the border with France half the workforce was French and we had some fun switching between the German, French and English languages. In fact it seemed to be only the East Germans had relatively poor English.
Bring home the magic...with R-C-A!!!!
Wow! I visited the AWA Valve manufacturing plant in Sydney in 1965 when I was doing my first year Radio Trades Course. It was an enormous factory with row
s of ladies assembling electronic valves, just like in this video. They just did all of this in their stride, chatting while they were working! We visited the Television manufacturing plant in 1966!
My father worked in that plant from approximately 1948 through 1978 as a research and development engineer. I grew up in the nearby suburbs about 6 blocks away and he walked to work every day. His second wife still lives in that house. A number of RCA employees lived in the surrounding suburbs. They also made the large CRT picture tubes.
It always amazes me to see all the specialized machines that had to be made for very specific tasks like this. Very cool!
Yes, I imagine it is very time consuming to by the first at anything. All machines have to be designed, tested, made sure that they are acceptable.
Our family had a TV and appliance store and were an RCA dealer, we had on onsite TV repair shop and several techs. I grew up hanging around that shop, a TV stand made a nice wheeled cart to sit on when you a kid. Over the years we used thousands of RCA tubes in the shop. I haven't seen any film like this before, I'm surprised at how much hand work was involved in the manufacture of them. Very interesting, thank you! 👍
Fran, your narration is fantastic.
WOW! The hand work to put tubes together is really cool! 👧
I love those faces and smiles. very beautiful and pure.
Thank you, Fran! Great narration and a really interesting film. I loved the solder-dip station. And……. All the Ladies look so happy!!!
Evacuation is typically on the order of 10-6 or 10-7 torr, getter takes care of the rest of the stray gasses.
Замечательные женщины и девушки ! Они делали такие " вкусные" вещи для радиоэлектроники ) - Как радиолампы )) . Для любительских радиопередатчиков, для гитарных усилителей, для радио и телевидения ! Просто прелесть ) Спасибо за труд !
Very interesting process. Make me remember when I was a old style TV repairer
I used to do that at HP on the Cathode Ray Tubes, We made our own. Pretty much the same process for Exhaust, Basing etc...
I was 11 in 66 and growing up a few miles away in Upper Darby. Thanks!
What a lovely smiling lady I'm distracted by her, never mind what she's doing!
Cool Post! Thanks! All that work so that a boomer like me could watch Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo on those all tube t.v.'s of the 1950's.
Very interesting, amazing what was accomplished with tubes..
As a kid we hated waiting for the TV to warm up 🥴🥴
The 2E24 has quite a history. It was typically used in early military manpacks and portable gear as the RF output amplifier. It nicely and efficiently ran on batteries because it is a directly heated tube with no Cathode.
It's magic capability was instant heating. So when you transmit, you light it. When receiving it is cold and not wasting battery power.
Excellent narration and thank you for posting this video.
First of all many thanks to you for bringing us years before when people were much happier in their life. Every pretty woman here has a smile or her face shows happiness and satisfaction. The second is that comparing this clip with the much earlier factory of Mullard in England shows that they were much automatized there. More capitalism demands more work from every single worker. In the Mullard factory, every worker did just one job. Here women are doing more complex jobs. Finally, people were much happier at that time. I remember that the radio was a luxury item at a time. One had a radio in a whole street. Some nice neighbors had been putting their radio in front of an open window and the neighbors were gathering together to listen to the music played from that luxury device. I have still 2 lamp radios from that era. THANK YOU FRANS
As a kid, I knew a gentleman who worked in that plant. Huge building, huge parking lot- hundreds or maybe thousands worked there.
thanks for sharing Fran...tube ladies: we salute you!
Just think... One of us could be using some of the tubes that those fine young ladies made so long ago. Thank you, Ladies, from guitar players everywhere! 🙏
There were so many old people in the 60"s; I"m glad I was just a toddler back then
The staff with bright smiles are charming like movie stars
my mother worked on one of those assembly lines at an RCA plant in Rahway, NJ around the same time this film was made. She worked there for several years before moving down south.
These old films are great...
Excellent post. Thank you for sharing.
This a great piece of electronics history! Great job on narrating as well. Thanks for doing this! ~VK
Fran, I love that you're ensuring the preservation of these amazing bits of history. Thank you.
Wow. I had NO idea that was how vacuum tubes were made. Very interesting. Great video. :)
You want to see someone make a tube from scratch, granted a basic tube? Look up Glasslinger on here. I think he made an audion valve also.
Nice, nostalgic video. It's now in the digital domain and will not degrade any further. Thanks for sharing!
Thank God they had gloves on!
That's a very interesting 5 minutes. Narration was very well done. Thank you for your post.
fascinating Fran, cheers... Reminded me of my dad, he was a valve(tube) fanatic... build all kinds of audi stuff back in the day... transistors really did'nt enter his realm..
My grandmother Anne Rhineer worked at RCA in Lancaster Pennsylvania
This is a really awesome series Fran...I love this kind of educational films from the yesteryear :)
Interesting historical footage, but sheesh what a contrast in times. I can imagine "off shore" factories looking a lot like this today. And I also can imagine that the women in the footage were given a heads up on on the filming event as some of the dress looks a bit formal or fancy for a working day at the factory. Thanks for posting this!
I love these old films.
I took electronics in high school in the 1960s. We repaired TVs and radios for faculty, friends, and relatives. Everything was vacuum tubes. Very few circuit boards, most wiring was point to point. All of the TVs we worked on were black and white. We did not have equipment to work on the color sets. Little did we know that TV repairmen would be a thing of the past in a few decades.
Some of these laddies are approaching the dawn of their lives as I was about to begin mine that year.
Fran, this was GREAT! I am from Pa & lived very close to Lancaster. I was only 6 at the time of this vid...WOW! What a labor intensive job to make vacuum tubes...thanks again for the "blast from my past"!
TAKE CARE....PEACE
Who could possibly not like this video? Jobs supporting the middle class. Thank you, Fran.