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Electronics Manufacturing in Australia Australia’s electronics manufacturing was world class. In the 1930s, over a thousand Aussie radio manufacturers supplied local and international markets, with production facilities ranging from home garages to massive factories that compared to most in the world in size and product quality. Part 2 by Kevin Poulter Captions, left-to-right, top-to-bottom: • Nicholson’s had a fine HMV display, organised by the HMV ad department. Note the three theatre productions advertised in banners at the top of the window. Many theatre booklets available at shows advertised the local radio & TV store. • An AWA Radiogram from around 1954, photographed by Max Dupain for the leaflet. • The EMI /HMV TV production line. Note the frames used to hold the partially assembled TVs. siliconchip.com.au Australia's electronics magazine September 2024  71 M any of the largest plants were branches of the big international names like Philips, Pye and EMI. Other big companies were inspired by or agents of international companies. For a long time, Amalgamated Wireless of Australia (AWA) was linked to Marconi Ltd of the UK, while Astor drew on the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) for inspiration. These arrangements resulted in many items being designed in Australia and produced with manufacturing techniques and quality compared to anywhere in the world. That was boosted by staff emigrating to Australia from countries like the UK to impart their knowledge here. AWA, in particular, made nearly all products and parts in-house, including valves, transistors, stamped and folded steel chassis and pressed Bakelite cases. Philips’ manufacturing was centred in Hendon, South Australia, where they also produced transistors. However, it was reported that the ordering process for Philips parts to make radios went via Sydney and was cumbersome, with long delays. So Philips radios were known to be assembled with components from other brands. Well-known local brand parts like IRC resistors and Ducon capacitors were installed in many local radios. In the 1930s, radio factories often made timber-case consoles at the factory; however, by the 1960s and 1970s, both TV and radiogram cabinets were often built to order by specialist furniture companies like Gainsborough Furniture. They were then delivered to the manufacturer to have the electronics installed. The furniture company’s name was often stamped inside the cabinet. Gainsborough established a plant next to the Astor Clayton Works on Clarinda Road, Clayton, Vic. The huge 3-in-1 (TV, radio and record player) cabinets were coated with a nearly indestructible polyurethane finish that had superb gloss and resistance to scratches. Each 3-in-1 needed buffing before despatch, but the cabinets were extremely heavy. So big men from Europe emigrated to Australia to lift and buff them. This worked well, but unfortunately, the dust from buffing was a lung irritant, and many workers became ill (or worse) years later. Large-scale manufacturers like AWA, HMV & Philips were like little 72 Silicon Chip Here the electronics are being installed into beautiful timber cabinets. Carpet and soft materials were used everywhere to avoid scratches. Modern collectors would love to have the brand-new turntables. AWA made a massive statement of their superiority in 1939 by building the AWA Tower as a new headquarters in York Street, Sydney. AWA was incorporated in 1913 and was the first to manufacture commercial radios in Australia, in 1920. The AWA Tower is now heritage listed. An AWA Radola promotional photograph with actress Alma Adey, circa 1953. Photograph by Max Dupain. Valve Works Manager Mr R. Lambie inspects the millionth miniature valve made by AWA around 1950, still hot from the Sealex machine. The valve is held by Mr Kevin Ward, while operator Miss Pat Wood starts on the next. Australia's electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au The Marketing departments produced promotional materials like Point of sale headers, leaflets and more. Prizes were offered for competitions, plus anything to showcase the new products. In the 1950s, it was much easier to use an artist’s painting to produce a result with accurate colours. Often the artwork was based on a photograph. The header says HMV Golden Jubilee Year – 1900 to 1950. Below: testing a completed HMV chassis, sans CRT. A fixed CRT for testing is above the test technician. cities, with their own post office (for business mail), cafe, accounts (in and out), purchasing, design, sales, shipping, machine shop, carpentry department, administration, managers, despatch/packing, order processing, switchboard, pay office, tea and coffee lady, and sometimes even a staff store. The staff stores offered staff prices significantly below retail. Staff in the office would see a ‘mail girl’ arrive at each desk once a day, as well as the tea and coffee trolley in the morning and afternoon. A charming lass also delivered pay to every desk or work area, so your work was never interrupted. The wages were delivered in small envelopes as notes and coins. Radio design It’s reasonable to expect that the parent companies of international brands would design products and send kits of parts to Australia or supervise a worldwide design manufactured here. After all, the Philips head office in Eindhoven, Netherlands, employed 2000 people, including more than 500 scientists in their research laboratories during the early 1980s. In practice, Australians designed most locally-distributed products. Philips Australia even set up a manufacturing plant at a university in Bandung, on Indonesia’s main island. AWA and Astor, plus many others, designed local radios and machines that reduced the number of employees needed. It was a hint of what was to come in today’s robotic factories. The larger companies boasted an advertising manager in-house, with photographers like Max Dupain and later myself on contract. A lesser number, like EMI/HMV, had their own photographer. In the 1950s, professional colour film was difficult to colour balance and still unusual, so outstanding paintings were produced for colour advertising in the likes of Women’s Weekly. There were still some engravings made for best reproduction in newspapers. Many of the photographs here were made on quality cameras, with 4 × 5-inch negatives (that’s postcard size, around 100 × 125mm!), so the quality was very good, mainly depending on the lighting. Manufacturers had special promotions; here, the Philips logo is on Frank Fry’s aircraft (photo by Kevin Poulter). Frank was the world acrobatic champion. Another major promotion was sponsoring Dire Straits’ Australian tour. siliconchip.com.au Australia's electronics magazine From design to customer Parts were ordered once a product was designed, with some made September 2024  73 This window celebrates the film “The Great Caruso” from 1951. Caruso was the”Rock Star” of the early 1900s, with millions of followers. The film won an Academy Award for “Best Sound Recording”. internally. When final production began, the sales staff responded to orders they received by raising an internal order on the factory. Next, the production supervisor managed the factory supply schedule, sometimes coerced by enthusiastic salespeople pushing to get their orders fulfilled first. The completed products went through testing processes and remained allocated to internal orders, which may have been 100 or more units for one customer. Testing involved checking many performance factors. Military customers expected testing over a temperature range or testing after aging. Mobile two-way radios would have a bumpy ride in many cases, so a bump machine was designed to test for loose connections. I witnessed a cost-cutting idea, where only a percentage of radios were tested, about 1 in 5 or 1 in 10. This really sped up production, but it was soon a disaster, as customers found the units that didn’t work. Not very good PR! Shipping An HMV radio and television display circa 1969. This was very likely at the Royal Easter Show in Sydney. On arrival at despatch, products were packed for a safe passage. Packing for sea freight overseas required something more sturdy than a cardboard box, so a specialist international freight-packing business often made timber boxes for this purpose. The inside of the box was lined with waxed paper or something similar to resist dampness and water incursion. On at least one occasion, I filled a large part of an aircraft with tonnes of rack-mounted equipment and a later shipment of many more tonnes via sea to Kota Kinabalu, the state capital of Sabah, Malaysia. From the beginning of radio broadcasting, just 100 years ago, AWA supplied many of Australia’s broadcast transmitters, so they made very large shipments too. Communications & Exports Elvy Carnegie (Elvy’s) Radio TV Records, a multi-storey store circa 1958. HMV put up a big display. Like other major stores, they offered in-home TV demonstrations, erecting a TV antenna and even doing the paperwork for the reception license required by the government. Australian employees occasionally travelled overseas to learn about the latest technology. However, when the local Philips K9 colour TV was doing well, one of the Aussie technicians turned the tables and went to Germany to help them with their version of the K9. A noticeable servicing feature of the set was that the two main Australia's electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au 74 Silicon Chip Left: a 1942 leaflet; despite a world at war, people were still purchasing new radios. Most were revisions of existing radios to avoid new tooling. Many domestic radio companies also made military radios. circuit boards would hinge open for easy access. Australia exported electronic products, especially communications devices, to regions like Southeast Asia and Pacific countries. At Pye, we had a telex machine, which was like an in-house telegram service. International phone calls on the lines transmitting telex were expensive. So, the telex operator would type messages on a narrow paper punch tape all day. Then, at the end of the day, she would send the messages via high-speed transmissions by pressing “send”. The pre-punched tape would feed through the telex, sending messages out very quickly. I remember one telex coming in from Kuala Lumpur asking Export how long their order would take. My first thought was, “wish you luck with that enquiry”. After about a week, a siliconchip.com.au different approach from KL: “Are you all dead? I would like a reply to my delivery enquiry of last week.” Marketing Australians can make electronics comparable to some of the best products in the world, but a company is doomed without sales. So photographs and technical information were needed for sales staff, service manuals, newspaper and magazine advertising, slides in theatres, attachments to contract pitches, sending to potential clients and more. During the era of large console radios in the 1930s, some consoles were made as small replicas, about the same size as a cathedral tabletop radio. That allowed the salespeople to transport and demonstrate the console more easily, as it had all the same electronics – just in a smaller package! Australia's electronics magazine By the 1950s, plastic mantel radios with no internal parts were made for easy handling by the salesman so the store owners could more easily see the style of the mantel radio. Competition The market was big enough for a fair number of manufacturers. AWA and Astor were the main players, with AWA being the strongest in its home state of NSW and Astor being the leader in Victoria. At various times, each claimed to sell the most radios in Australia. AWA boasted the first fully Australian-made transistor radio. It was an interesting time for retailing products. Have you ever wondered why some radios were sold under multiple name badges? For example, the Philips metal-cased valve portable is still collected with September 2024  75 All components were made in-house During the 1920s and 1930s, AWA made virtually everything in house, including screws, resistors and foil capacitors, although the latter were sourced from IRC and Ducon after WW2. Bakelite moulding was a speciality for knobs, cabinets, component parts, telephone handsets and parts for Sunbeam and Hotpoint appliances. AWA had some of the largest specialised injection moulding presses in Australia for precision moulding. Before tariffs were removed, AWA manufactured approximately 975,000 loudspeakers. Many AWA valves were made under license. It was intricate work, yet people said valves were expensive! one of three brands: “Philips”, “Fleetwood” or “Mullard”. Well, it was to increase sales. Before Australia’s restrictive sales legislation, a manufacturer could refuse to supply electrical products to some stores, especially if they already had a good dealer in that town. The existing dealer could force this, too, by saying they would not stock the brand if the nearby store could compete with him. For example, a retailer in Gippsland (Vic) applied to sell Philips products. Philips told him he could not sell Philips Radios, as his area already had an outlet. “But no problem, you can sell Mullard.” Philips owned Mullard at the time, and this demonstrates one of the reasons for rebadging! so they were not seen on the production line. In the panorama of the production line image in this article, a male supervisor watches to check that there is little or no talking and that everyone is dedicated to the task in front of them. After the TV finishes going through each sub-assembly, the completed chassis is transferred to a man in the inspection department. If it passes visual inspection, he runs the TV through its electronic testing and visual paces, including stability and linearity, using a test pattern on the screen. The men were selected for this role due to their training at Radio Colleges. The Astor brand shop in Melbourne. The brand name Astor was coined when Sir Arthur Warner was staying at the Astor Hotel in New York, and he thought, “That’s a good name.” Looking at Astor’s 1964 “Your Job” booklet reveals a lot about electronics manufacturing in the 1960s. Each employee worked from 9am to 5pm and had a number to clock in and out with. Lunch was just half an hour, even though the canteen served big meals and there was a queue to get yours. ‘Reverse sexism’ and chivalry meant that female employees got ten-minute morning and afternoon tea breaks. Referring to toilet breaks was frowned upon, so they were likely intended as toilet breaks. Working in the Astor accounts department was a superior position. Still, in 1964, the weekly pay was just six pounds, twelve shillings ($13.20 in decimal currency or about $220 per week in today’s inflation-adjusted dollars). However, money went much further at that time. Employment was on a weekly basis, which sounds extremely brief, but I never saw it exercised. You could be dismissed without notice for “malingering, inefficiency, neglect of duty or misconduct”. Even in non-union companies, the employee was highly valued in the 1950s and 1960s, as there was nearly 100% employment. When I applied as a 16-year-old, I was shown around the factory and then asked if I could start on Monday! There were no queues out the door, like in many places where people apply for jobs today. All employees were required to have a medical examination before starting, supposedly for their benefit. This was so they would only be required to do work within their health limitations. On the positive side, the company usually selected candidates for senior positions from existing employees. Lifting the veil Electronic Industries, later Astor, began in 1923 in a small basement Many of the EMI/HMV photographs here are the only ones in existence, published here for the first time. They show more than many words could describe. The big factories had rows of women, usually housewives, each assembling a small portion of products like TVs. These ladies were the backbone of the assembly and had the wonderful character of not being too bored by repetitive tasks. Males were considered more ambitious, with a shorter attention span, Philips AC/Battery portable radios about 1953. For marketing purposes, these radios were badged either Philips, Fleetwood or Mullard; one of each is shown. 76 Silicon Chip Australia's electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au Negotiation for a pay rise was almost unheard of, although the company stated they would review pay from time to time. What happened to Australian electronics manufacturing? A parliamentary submission after the big electronics nose-dive into collapse says it well: “The demise of Australian manufacturing started when the then Prime Minister Mr Gough Whitlam took advice from the Industries Assistance Commission and (in 1973) reduced tariffs by 25%. The country could not compete with the low wages in Asian countries.” I saw mass closures of electronics factories shortly after, and talented Australians were left without a job. Companies like Philips Mobile Communications had lower sales due to cheaper imports from companies like Motorola. Then, with the advent of mobile phones, sales plummeted. Philips threw in the towel and shipped essential production equipment to China. A good number of Philips two-way comms staff were later employed by Simoco Australia, who develop and sell the latest communications equipment. Radios and TVs were given to excited viewers and listeners as prizes. This publicity was cheaper than paid advertising. Who owns AWA now? The answer will surprise many. After their radio sales fell to unsustainable levels, they ran AWA Computer Services for a while. Eventually, the copyright and trademarks for the radio side of the business apparently lapsed, so cheap imported products had AWA badges. Cabrini Catholic Hospital in Melbourne wanted to continue using the IP in the software that was important to running the hospital, so Cabrini is now the owner of AWA. Entrepreneurs became very successful importers, including Dick Smith and the late Gary Johnston of Jaycar. In an address to the HRSA, Dick Smith said the upheaval was good for Australia, as we then all paid much less for electronics, including TVs. Certainly, Australians can now purchase and import an amazing array of electronic technology. Only speciality local manufacturing remains, like producing technology for satellites and radio imaging to detect food production problems. Many who worked in electronics will say, “It was great while it lasted.” SC siliconchip.com.au Above: Astor valve radio production. The frame holding a chassis in the foreground is a simple timber truss. Astor chassis are punched in one operation on these automatic presses. After stamping the holes for valve sockets etc, the metal is cadmium plated. Cadmium, and the compounds formed when it corrodes, are toxic by ingestion and acutely toxic if inhaled. Australia's electronics magazine September 2024  77