In the autumn of 1956 I started my apprenticeship with Ediswans (actually The Edison and Swan Electric Light Company Limited), who, besides paying all my college fees gave me a weekly salary of three pounds six shillings and eight-pence. This seemed to me a rather odd sum, especially as I noted that six and eight-pence was exactly one third of a pound. The first half year was spent at their light-bulb-making factory, a short distance from my home in Ponders End. This was located in a region locally known as The Spike, a rather bleak area containing the factory and just a few houses, positioned between the railway, the River Lea, and a power station. Although I was a student rather than a craft apprentice, I still had to spend this period in the apprentice training centre with the craft apprentices, to gain experience in metalwork - but not necessarily to the higher skill levels of those who were to become toolmakers. The apprentice training centre was very advanced for the time, under the leadership of Mr Bright, and his assistants, Henry and Harry. Harry was an old but skilled metalworker who could make metal perfectly flat and square in about half a dozen strokes of a file, but Henry was more on the clerical side. He it was who took charge of the layout of the machines that became available for the shop, including an old Sedgwick lathe and his pride and joy, an almost new Colchester Student lathe. When a shaper was donated - probably because such devices were being replaced by milling machines - he carefully directed its installation and naturally operated it on its first ever stroke in our shop. The apprentices who crowded round were amazed at the length of the forward motion of the ram on which its cutting tool was mounted - which seemed to go on forever - but they all had to take cover from flying plaster and brick fragments when the back stroke plunged the ram into the wall behind the machine! After the wall was repaired, the shaper was moved much further forward.
Our first training sessions were devoted to hacksawing, filing and drilling some metal plates which were obviously cut-outs from a job in another machine shop. As we began to develop some skills, we next had to make a cross and smaller square from another of the plates, where the square had to exactly fit into the space formed at each corner of the cross. The final task of these hand-tool sessions was to cut three holes in yet another of the plates, one hole a square, another a circle, and the third a triangle. Into each of these holes a separate piece, cut from a round steel bar, had to fit one of its three outlines - a shape initially difficult to visualise. I enjoyed my time in the training centre, and did become reasonably skillful with lathes, grinders and mills, as well as hand tools. It was whilst using one of the machines that I noticed that the ON and OFF buttons on its starter did not protrude from their recesses properly, probably because the springs behind them had collapsed slightly. To correct this, after turning off the isolator switch, I removed the starter's cover, preparatory to stretching the button springs a little. It was while I was doing this that one of the company electricians happened to pass by, who was outraged to see an obviously non-union person, and an apprentice to boot, performing such a task. Only a long and conciliatory discourse from Mr Bright averted the possibility of an electricians' strike, and I was told very firmly to not interfere with anything!
We apprentices were a typical bunch of wild sixteen-year-olds, and we got up to antics such as stealing a swig of lemonade from a bottle kept under another boy's bench. When one lad got tired of being the main target of this game, he refilled his lemonade bottle with white spirit. The first boy to take a quick gulp swallowed some spirit before the taste alerted him, and so he ended up in hospital. Having been sternly warned off this practice, we then turned to making little pistols to fire small ball-bearings. These consisted of a barrel, made from some brass rod, drilled with a blind hole the same diameter as the ball, to which another, shorter piece of drilled rod was brazed, near the barrel's closed end. The hole in the small rod accommodated a flattened end nail, the protruding head of which could be tapped, to ignite scrapings from the heads of safety matches which had been pushed down into the main barrel. So, when the nail head was tapped, a ball bearing, which had followed the scrapings into the barrel, would be fired from the gun. One evening when I was playing with one of these weapons, I could not find any safety matches, so had to resort to using the red strike-anywhere versions. As I pushed the scrapings down the barrel whilst holding the gun in my hand, I stupidly used the metal nail instead of something wooden, and this caused the more easily activated red match heads to ignite, sending a jet of flame out of the smaller tube - into my palm. I suppressed my scream of reaction to the resulting burn as much as possible, but had to retreat indoors to get attention from Mum, inventing some excuse that did not reveal what I actually had been doing.
When we knocked-off at the end of each day, there would be a great rush of employees, both pedestrians and cyclists, to get over the adjacent railway level crossing before its gates closed to allow a train through. Those that failed to arrive in time would all bunch up behind the gates waiting for them to re-open. On one occasion I was not at the front of this horde when it was released, and tried to overtake on the outside of Duck Lea Crossing, the road from the factory. Going too fast, I was unable to squeeze into the crowd on the left of the Keep Left sign at the junction with Aylmer Road, so had to pass it on the right. Unfortunately, just as I did so, I saw I was approaching a cyclist who had just turned right from the correct side of the road sign, so frantically applied my brakes with all my strength. This had little effect on my speed, as the nipples on the ends of the cables on both my front and rear brakes sheared off under the excessive force I applied, and I smashed into the other rider. I was thrown over my handlebars, to land dazed and grazed in the road. I expected to be harangued by the man I had targeted, but he moved off wheeling his bicycle with its now dished front wheel without any comment. Other people stopped to check that I was OK, after which I limped my way home with donated hankies around my bloody knees, forehead, and elbows.
After completing my first six-months at Ediswans, I spent the first half of the following year at Enfield Technical College (see the chapter named College), and the following years followed this pattern of half-years at alternate venues. I cannot remember the exact order of the departments to which I was seconded for each factory visit, only that it seemed that each time I returned from a college session, the name of the company had been changed, so my Indentures had to be altered. From The Edison Swan Electric Company, the named changed to Siemens Ediswan, GEC Electrics, AEI Woolwich and finally Thorn Electrical Industries, but this list may not be exhaustive. After the stint at Ponders End, I mostly worked in their factory in nearby Brimsdown, but did also spend periods at another in Harlow, and laboratories in Tottenham.
We apprentices had to complete progress report books for each department we joined, and when in the one devoted to cathode ray tube production, the topic that most us will recall is that of Glugging. This referred to something that should be avoided at all costs during the process of coating the inside surface of a cathode ray tube - CRT - with its phosphor. This would be dissolved in a host liquid which was poured in through the small rear spout of the CRT, where the Gun would later be fitted. For some days filled CRTs would remain mounted in a row of mechanisms with their large front surfaces at the bottom, so that the phosphors could settle, and attach themselves to those surfaces. After the settling time had elapsed, the clockwork-controlled mechanisms would be triggered to tilt the CRTs and let the host liquids that had carried the phosphors drain out. This operation had to happen very slowly, so that there was no chance of the liquid Glugging in the spout, which would create waves in the liquid that would cause the still soft phosphor to detach from the inside of the front of the CRT.
Each finished CRT and its Gun - the glass part that contained the components to create and direct the cathode ray - would later be installed into one of the fifty assembly units that formed the In-Line. This monster consisted of a very large oval track upon which the assembly units travelled in timed steps between different automatic workstations. At the first of these stations the CRT and its gun assembly would gradually be brought together whilst being heated by flames from rotating gas jets, so that the two sections were glass welded into one entity. The next station consisted of a long oven in which the CRT glass was annealed and the internal phosphor coating baked. At subsequent stages, air was evacuated from the CRT before the glass pipe connecting it to the vacuum pump below was finally sealed with more gas jets. The last stage was where the internal Getter material - used to absorb traces of any gases still remaining in the CRT - was fired by an external Radio Frequency Heater coil. This assembly line was managed by operators who loaded CRTs and guns at its beginning, and removed the finished items at the end, and the process normally continued each day with only the occasional stoppage to correct some small malfunction. However, it was not unknown for one of the CRTs to implode, causing lumps of quite thick glass to smash into adjacent stages, resulting in a chain reaction as tube after tube imploded in turn. The Whoomph noises made by implosions were quite different to the Bangs of explosions, so while those nearby took shelter, throughout the factory the reaction of other workers would be something like, Oh! The In-Line's gone again!
Besides the Guns for CRTs, glass was also involved in the manufacture of valves, and my designated role at the end of my apprenticeship was actually to be a Valve Engineer. Some other apprentices however were targeted as Glass Blowers, and between training periods they would experiment with making glass animals and other decorative objects. Another easily produced item was a pea-shooter, and lots of these were made and given to other apprentices. Plenty of these weapons were taken on the apprentice outing to The Kursaal at Southend in a coach, from whose windows we fired pearl barley at cars we passed. Unfortunately, the driver's window happened to be open on one of these cars, and a lone shot struck him in the face. He managed to get the coach driver to stop, and spent some time haranguing us hooligans for our stupid and dangerous prank. We were naturally quite contrite, and continued the journey rather less boisterously. Things improved though when we actually arrived at The Kursaal, where I made contact with a rather nice looking girl in the Crazy House. She came from Billericay, and we continued to meet for quite a while after the Southend trip.
I spent one period in the Valve Testing department, where the characteristics of samples from current production runs, or samples of new designs, would be measured. I was given the job of making up circuits to connect the particular type of valve being tested - diode, triode, pentode, etc. - to the bank of instruments mounted in a panel on the test bench. To attach wires to the appropriate type of valve socket I used a soldering iron, which, after use, I would hang back on a nail up at the top of the panel, using a hook on the iron. On one occasion the hook missed the nail, so when released the iron started to fall. Instinctively, I reached for it, but rather than grabbing the insulated handle, my fingers closed around the extremely hot part containing the heating element. I cannot recall how loud my reaction was, but it certainly very quickly brought co-workers to me, who rushed me off to the Factory Nurse for treatment to my very painful hand. In later life I have come close to repeating this nasty experience, but have always managed - only just in time - to let a falling soldering iron drop safely to the floor.
A different type of testing was carried out in another department, Shrinkage Analysis. It was not a large department, being manned by just one person, and I spent some very pleasant months with him, during which we spent more time chatting than actually working. The basic raison d'être for the unit was to provide information which would enable possible trends in manufacturing faults to be identified before too many failures could occur - an early example of modern quality inspection. Valves which had failed to pass final inspection would be delivered to the small office where we worked, to be examined to find out the cause of their rejection. Besides the small valves used in radios for example, we also looked at large versions, as big as footballs, which were for radio transmitters. Some valves were soft, meaning that gases had not been fully extracted from their glass envelopes - Failed Getter might be the detected reason in that case. If not that, the cause could usually be detected by steeping affected items in a bath of paraffin into which had been dissolved a very fine powder. This powder was fluorescent in ultra-violet light, and bright green areas around faulty glass seals could be seen after the dodgy items had been rinsed following their bath and illuminated by a special lamp in a curtained alcove. Other valves would be found to have faults with their inner components when their glass envelopes were broken open. Grids or anodes could be found not attached to the base connecting pins, or the heaters might be touching the surrounding cathode - there were many alternative columns that could be ticked on the charts carefully filled in by my companion. I once asked him what happened to these charts, and he told me that they would receive cursory glances from his supervisor each month, but that he was unaware of anything actually occurring as a result. He suggested that this inaction could be because management did not want to upset any unions by checking up on production workers, but they maintained the fiction of control with his one-man band.
I experienced a small example of the strength of workers in those days when I approached one in the Sheet Metal department with a request - apparently from where I was currently based - to make a chassis for an electrical unit. He immediately responded by saying that I had to go through proper channels, that they were very busy with urgent items at the time, and that they probably did not have any of the aluminium sheet needed. As this response made me look very dispirited, he looked at my drawing again, and asked, Is this a Homer? The term Homer referred to items made for personal use during company time, and usually with company materials, and I had to guiltily admit that this item was of that ilk. His attitude then changed completely, as he said, Oh! That's different!, then told me to wait there a bit whilst he went off to the stores. He came back after a few moments with a sheet of the correct thickness of aluminium, and then proceeded to cut it to size, and form it to shape, right in front of my eyes. I expressed my extreme gratitude, which he waved off, telling me to come back any time if I needed something else. The chassis was actually for a six valve superhet radio that I was about to make with valves I had liberated from somewhere, which was to go into the nice case of my parent's old Bush radio that was not working too well.
Most of the metal parts inside valves were made at the company's factory located in Harlow, so I and another two apprentices met up on the first morning of the time we were to spend there at Brimsdown station, to catch a train for our journey. We jumped into a carriage when it arrived, but as we alighted at the second station after Cheshunt, we found ourselves at Stanstead Abbots instead of Harlow. We realized that we must have boarded the train that had arrived before the one that went to Harlow, so enquired from the ticket office how we could correct our error. There were no suitable trains scheduled to get us to Harlow quickly, so we took up a suggestion that we take the local bus. When that eventually arrived in Harlow, it deposited us outside Harlow Old Town Station instead of the one before, so we were faced with a long walk up Edinburgh Way to arrive quite late at our destination. I cannot remember any incidents of note happening during my time there, only mental pictures of the rows of multi-slide forming machines that were used to make the valve components.
My future as a Valve Engineer began to look rather unlikely after the time I spent at the Company's laboratories in Fulbourne Road, Tottenham as it was there that I viewed scenes from the early days of the development of transistors. Each time I passed the window of another lab than the one in which I was based, I would see a long metal rod protruding upwards from a red hot crucible, and it seemed to be getting taller day-by-day. When I enquired about this odd phenomenon, I was told that I was witnessing the growth of a crystal of Germanium. When growing was complete, such bars were sliced into very thin discs, and then cut into small squares, to which indium tipped wires were fused on their two faces, to create PNP type transistors. In those early experiments, before the production processes were refined, only a small quantity of finished transistors actually worked.
As I failed to pass all the required exams at the end of my five-year HND course at college, I had to ask for my apprenticeship to be extended so that I could repeat the final year. This was agreed, but required yet another change to my indentures. Happily I scraped through my finals at college in the first part of my extra year, and was awarded my HND. When I returned to Ediswans to complete the second half, nothing had been planned for this extra time, so I was initially sent back to the Apprentice Training Centre. I assisted a little with the classes for the young intake, but was otherwise rather left to my own devices. As an exercise, I was allowed to make a two-inch diameter twist drill with a Morse Taper shank, which involved turning, helical milling, and cylindrical grinding. This turned out pretty well, and I found out later that it was placed in the Centre's stores, where it acquired a quite realistic patina. Unfortunately, anyone who wanted to use it to drill a two-inch hole would have little success as it was made from Mild Steel, not the High Speed Steel actually used for twist drills. A task for which I volunteered was to renovate the suds pump system on the old Sedgewick lathe, which involved replacing plastic pipes and Jubilee Clips. I got a requisition for some new clips, but could not find out whether I needed size 0, 00, or 000, so I guessed and picked 0. At the Company stores, when the clips were placed on the counter, I realised that they were far too big, and that I really needed 000s, so asked the store-man to change the requisition to that size, and give me some of them. He was infuriated by such a request, even though I explained that I was the one who had asked for the wrong size, and he told me to go back and get the requisition officially amended. Halfway along the long walk back to the Training Centre, I decided to change the size number myself, and went back to the stores. Unfortunately I got the same store-man, who deduced that I had come back too quickly to have completed a journey to the Training Centre, and I was in trouble again!
Possibly to get me out of the way, I then spent a short time in a Development Laboratory at Brimsdown, where I assisted someone who had designed a system for showing a set of valve characteristic curves on a TV-type screen. There were several power supplies as well as the TV setup, and they had to be switched on - and off - in a precise order. This was necessary to prevent the TV screen phosphor being burnt when no deflection signals were being applied to the cathode ray beam whilst its Gun was still powered, resulting in a big black spot in the middle of its tube. With all the electronics lectures I had attended giving me confidence. I started to design a circuit to control the sequential connection of power to the various units involved, but realized immediately that I had no idea how to begin! So much for book learning! With help from my mentor, I did eventually construct a setup that worked, but I'm sure it was due to getting far more of his input than mine.
After leaving the Laboratory, for my last session as an apprentice I was posted to Ferrites, a small department involved in experiments relating to iron oxide-based magnetic ceramics. For the short time I was there, I mainly tested ferrites of different compositions to measure their relative magnetic strengths. I performed these tests using the motor of a toy electric train, by swapping its conventional metal magnet with each of the ceramic variants in turn. With its motor replaced, the train's engine would be placed on a circular track powered by a constant voltage twelve volt power source, and the time taken for a fixed number of laps recorded. Obviously, the ceramic that produced the shortest lap time would be judged to be the strongest, but the procedure was not very scientific as there were many uncontrollable variables, so the results were not very conclusive. However it kept me busy, and the head of the department was quite keen for me to join it permanently when I completed my apprenticeship. I had been married for over two years by then, and was looking to improve my housing situation, so a plan was devised where I would actually start in the Ferrites department at Brimsdown, but be recorded as working at the Harlow valve components factory. Hopefully this scam would enable me to qualify for housing in Harlow, to get something better than the three rooms in which June and I were currently living. This arrangement was never put to the test however, as negotiations started around this time about amalgamating Ediswans with Thorn Electrics. I was informed by the Employment Department - nowadays Human Resources - that I could not be promised future employment since people currently working at Ediswans did not know if they themselves would keep their own jobs if this merger took place. They suggested that I write to other potential employers to seek a job, which I did immediately, aiming my enquiries to companies in Harlow in the hope of getting a job - and a house - there. As related in the chapter named Cossors, they did eventually offer me a position, and was able to leave Ediswans before the proposed amalgamation actually did take place.