Ferranti history

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by dave walsh

Ed mentioned a "thick tome" about Ferrari [post 6*]. What's the title does anyone know?

There's John F. Wilson's Ferranti: A History, in three volumes:

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/S...c=off&xpod=off

Volume 1 (roughly 640 pages) is subtitled Building a Family Business, volume 2 From Family Firm to Multinational, and volume 3 Management, Mergers and Fraud 1987-1993. Apparently they're from three different publishers, and volume 3 at least, from Manchester University Press, is still in print:

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719088391/

The True Road to Radio is quite a substantial book that was published by Ferranti, but it presents the 1931 state of the art rather than the company's story. It's available for download at World Radio History,

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...E4YeWCpSY7i8kh

Paul

[dave walsh]

Thanks for that very useful and detailed Info Paul I can see from other posts that you are now very much settled in the new abode with your extensive radio collection! Best wishes for the New Year when it [inevitably] arrives!

Dave
Bexhill at present [that's not a seasonal pun]

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by dave walsh

I can see from other posts that you are now very much settled in the new abode with your extensive radio collection! Best wishes for the New Year when it [inevitably] arrives!

Thanks Dave, and all good wishes for yours! The collection isn't quite as extensive as it was, especially in the Ferranti department. I used to have an A1

https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/ferranti_a1_a_1.html

, a Lancastria Magna and a 145. I'd only started the A1's restoration, a long time ago, by french polishing the cabinet, not the easiest job as the spectacular front panel "veneers" turned out to be printed paper, plus it was peppered with woodworm. It was missing its speaker and some large exposed RF coils under the chassis had suffered badly scraped windings, so there was plenty left for someone to do.

I think my 546 must have stayed in the NE too, leaving me with just a 255T - early FM set, one of the last "true" Ferranti domestic radios before they were absorbed into Ekco - and a little PT1031, Ferranti clone of the Ekco PT352 and Dynatron Tourist.

Paul

[Vintage Engr]

I worked on quite a few Ferranti 405-line TV's in the early 1960's. One in particular, which was a 21" consolette. 70 degree CRT, with no aquadag external coating, using instead, as was quite normal at the time, a metrosil & a Visconol high-voltage capacitor. Remember this fact as it is referred to later...

It was the winter 0f 1963, the big freeze. The customer was less than a mile from our workshop, but the snow was thick. Having already decided that the fault required workshop attention, two of us went to collect the TV. I seem to remember that the original fault was in the tuner. We arrived back at the workshop yard, which was so snowed in, that we decided to carry the set down the alleyway, into our yard/workshop area.
Only three or four feet away from the workshop door, both of us slipped on ice, hidden under the snow. The result was that the TV shot upwards from our grasp, we flattened ourselves in the snow. The TV came crashing down, the legs broke off, the cabinet sides & top parted company with the chassis & the tube imploded!

I think that we were really lucky, as we only had slight grazes. The TV however was in a very sorry state. Cutting a long story very short, we were mainly a rental company, but also took on insurance & chargeable jobs. This TV belonged to the owner, who was very fussy.
We rebuilt & re-polished the cabinet, fitted a new CRT, and yes, repaired the tuner fault.
Still in the grips of the big freeze, we took the set back. The first thing the customer noticed was the 'lovley shine' on the cabinet, if only she knew.
Having lifted the set in place, the lady of the house brough us tea & biscuits, on a large silver tray which she placed on top of the TV. (Think of a giant silver-mica capacitor).

You're probably now ahead of me, but I then switched on the TV, one hand still on the edge of the tray.
It was lucky I didn't break the china, as my hand quickly withdrew from a fairly large arc coming off the edge of the tray!

So that is why I remember this particular Ferranti TV.

Later on in my varied career, away from domestic TV, one of the companies I worked for used Ferranti ZNA 234 sync generator IC's in a small production run of SPGs for the A/V industry, also lots of ZTX504's in audio equipment.

Finally, I have just remembered that I have a book, which was published by Ferranti in 1931 entitled "The True Road to Radio" This gives the early history of Ferranti, and then some very in-depth technical information about their circuit designs of the period, very mathematical for its time. There is also a fine photograph of Mr Ferranti, who looks very much like the actor in the film.

As others have mentioned, Ferranti is another company that we should not have lost.

David.

[G6fylneil]

I recall one day in the early '90s when most of the shop-floor employees of the company I worked for squeezed into the canteen to hear the MD explain that although Ferranti owed us £100K, 90% of that was covered by insurance...

[stevehertz]

Back in the 70s there was a chap in the BVWS who collected Ferranti and not surprisingly he was something of an expert on the company and its products. Pity I can't recall his name though!

[David G4EBT]

When - in 1962 they said the Atlas was 'the World's fast computer' - how did that compare to say the Sinclair Spectrum of 1972?

I marvel at how relatively primitive computing was back in the 60s, yet they managed to put a man on the moon on July 20 1969, when electronics often consisted of through hole components. No SMDs for example. It's one thing having a physically large compute at 'ground control' but quite another thing to get guys onto the moon and back safely to earth.

I wonder how much computing power that took, relative to say the computing power of a modern smartphone?

Heck you can buy 1 terabyte USB memory flash drives, with 440 MBps transfer rates!

The mind boggles.

[telstar]

My late father once worked for Ferranti Radio & Television in the early 1950's. I will see if I can obtain a copy of this book.

[Red to black]

Originally Posted by David G4EBT

When - in 1962 they said the Atlas was 'the World's fast computer' - how did that compare to say the Sinclair Spectrum of 1972?

The mind boggles.

1982 surely? you losing the plot Dave?
or a simple typo?

[David G4EBT]

Originally Posted by Red to black

1982 surely? you losing the plot Dave?
or a simple typo?

A bit of both I guess!

And a glass of sherry too many perhaps?

I should know fine well that it was 1982. As an indulgent parent, that Christmas, I fobbed out £175 for a 16K Spectrum, and as I recall, another £48 to expand the memory to 48K to make it 'future proof'. (Huh!). That equates to £715 + £195 today when adjusted for inflation.

Back on topic, how sad that a once great company like Ferranti lost its way in the world.

[dave walsh]

Thanks to all concerned for yet more wise words and lived experiences. The initial volume by John Wilson [1892-1975] seems to be readily available Mike [Telstar] covering the first 90 years. There is a reason why V3 particularly [only 6 years 1987-93] and V2 1975 to 87] remained in print. It's clear that they were/are recommended reading if you are doing Business Studies [perish the thought] re the transition from a family based business to a complex International one that ultimately failed. I was saying to my wife that Ferranti seemed to have an ethos of looking after the workforce without actually building a sort of model [ie ideal] village like Titus Salt in Yorkshire or Port Sunlight in Cheshire [or is that Merseyside?] It's pointed out elsewhere that many businesses had experienced the same changes in the twentieth century but Ferranti held on longer to it's approach than most!

David [Vintage Engr] Your story was both really hilarious and frightening, well up to the very best of the much missed Chas Miller's engaging tales. The fascinating documentary "The Big Freeze" [re 1963] was shown again recently on BBC4, introduced by Chris Packham, Mr Nature Watch. Perhaps it was because it turned so very cold recently. You have 10 days left to see it on I-Player and it was also previously shown in January 2013 [50th Anniversary] snow was blanketing the whole UK then! While you were juggling with TV sets, Bob Dylan was staying at Martin Carthy's flat in London. It was so cold that they attempted "gathering winter fuel" by chopping up an old piano with a Samuri Sword believe it or not
Not many people know that!

Dave W

[G4_Pete]

I worked on the Ferranti Argus 500 in process control for many years as the support and on call engineer for two online installations and a hot spare. Difficult to look back with nostalgia having worked every hour of the day and night and missed important family events, like the christening of my first son, to keep the Argus 500 processing and the control plants online!
However there were some lighter moments like the time we programmed for BST/GMT auto time change to save coming in in the early hours only to get a call on the next day as the time was still resetting back every hour as we forgot to put in a flag to say that the task had already been done that autumn.
Technically the processor and core store stayed the same with good reliability but the paper tapes got upgraded to high speed mylar punch tapes and the Burroughs disk drives with solid state bulk memory with internal battery power hold up , Fire safe and routine backups were by reel to reel tape. Some of the original power supplies for the I/O racks were so heavy that they needed riggers to lift them in and out but they later got changed to switch mode solving that problem.
That also removed the routine of checking the base emitter volts drop for the rows of power transistors, fortunately these were brought out to the panel as test points , this change to switch mode from now aging linear psu's also gave a step change in reliability.

So many memories of the Ferranti Argus but having once been at the forefront of process control it is another of those stories that with a bit of vision could and should have ended differently. At the end after the last functions had been migrated to a non UK platform we all went down to switch off the power , the final power down alarm messages chuntered out of the printer which I put in a frame and gave to the senior engineer. That was it, end of decades of work and beginning of the end for Ferranti in process control.
Pete

[nutteronthebus]

My late farther worked at the Moston branch he got me a pre production ZN414 radio chip and I made a match box radio with it . I still have share cert from Ferranti ( not worth any thing due them going broke )

Dave

[telstar]

I once used a ZN414 I.C on a radio project when I did a course at Lowestoft F.E. College in Suffolk in the 1980's. It worked quite well

[DMcMahon]

Originally Posted by mark_in_manc

Cheadle Heath is still going, still doing sonar - it was Marconi-Thompson for a bit and then became (and remains) Thales.

.

Do you know what they are now doing at Cheadle Heath, i.e. Computer system (maybe successor to FM1600E) for the Sonar or actual Sonar hardware ?

David

[DMcMahon]

Thinking about it more, it is quite possible that the additional computing power that the bolt on FM1600 computer system provided is now integrated into the later Sonar system hard ware suites, i.e. now there may not be a separate computer system.

David

[cmjones01]

I realise that I have a few Ferranti artefacts on the top shelf in my workshop, which is the place I keep things which are interesting or inspiring to look at but of little daily practical use! Among them are my old BBC Micro and ZX81 which contain Ferranti ULA chips, but most striking is this board from a Ferranti Pegasus computer. I don't know what its function is supposed to be, but it has a couple of 6060 dual triodes (a special quality ECC81/12AT7) and a lot of diodes.

I bought it just out of curiosity when Bull Electrical (remember them?) were selling them off for a pound each in the late 1980s. The Pegasus computer, and thus this module, date from the late 1950s.

Chris

[DMcMahon]

Originally Posted by DMcMahon

Do you know what they are now doing at Cheadle Heath, i.e. Computer system (maybe successor to FM1600E) for the Sonar or actual Sonar hardware ?

David

This Thales web link gives a general overview of the work done at Cheadle Heath.

https://www.thalesgroup.com/en/europ...d/thales-north

David

[Radio Wrangler]

Quite a few people at HP in South Queensferry moved there from the Ferranti Radar branch nearby in Western Edinburgh (Multiple sites from Silverknowes, Crewe Toll and several satellite sites)

In the Seventies, Ferranti seemed to be run as a hire-and-fire operation with frequent news announcements of redundancies seeming to be triggered whenever they failed to get a particular contract, with recruitment drives in between. At HP, where a number of managers were ex-Ferranti, we were a bit embarrassed to be progressing smoothly and steadily expanding. Most of Ferranti seemed to have job applications.

Ferranti had an excellent reputation for training youngsters, offering apprenticeships leading to all levels of qualifications. They developed some very good people. Unfortunately, they did not follow this up with particularly good pay, so many left. This must have been a significant drain on their organisation and looked plain daft from a business point of view. They were training pesonnel for many firms in the area, a their expense and for no benefit to themselves.

Post-2001, when the wheels fell off HP/Agilent in the 'ferry, and there were frequent and large waves of redundancies, quite a few found their way to Crewe Toll to work for (Then) Selex. The Ferranti Radar operation survived the crash of Ferranti, passing through the hands of GEC for a while and ending up part of the appropriately Italian Finmeccanica group. Still doing Radar and optics for the military. Their name got changed a few times passing through Galileo and now Leonardo (I think they're working their way through the teenage mutant ninja turtles)

In my post-HP employment, we contracted out the heavier parts of our environmental testing to the company-formerly-known-as-Ferranti. And at one point, I got a tour round from some of their managers. It was amazing how many faces I recognised in just the small part which was tourable... along with getting calls of "Ho, David, you here for a job?"

At one point in the nineties, Ferranti as-was decided on a large scale refurb of their facilities, vacated the Silverknowes end of things and moved the centroid of their operations to around the Crewe Toll roundabout. The R&D side got a full new building, and the factory/environmental side got a new big building front-ending some of the older buildings. HP loaned them John Cooke and Peter Green as consultants advising on modernising their R&D lab both in terms of physical structure and employment terms. They'd finally twigged about retaining people.

So there were a lot of links between the HP and Ferranti sites near Edinburgh. Probably Ferranti Radar were the seed for "Silicon Glen". It was an ex-Ferranti guy or two who were the motive power behind moving HP from Bedford to South Queensferry when they needed to expand.

Oh, there is a Ferranti TSR2 radar unit in the Museum of Communication in Burntisland (it isn't an island, and it isn't burnt!)

David

[Paul_RK]

Originally Posted by cmjones01

I realise that I have a few Ferranti artefacts... most striking is this board from a Ferranti Pegasus computer. I don't know what its function is supposed to be, but it has a couple of 6060 dual triodes (a special quality ECC81/12AT7) and a lot of diodes.

I've no idea of its function either: the ECC81 seems to have been the valve of choice for numeric applications, even my Anita MkVIII desktop calculator employs a row of ten of them (and, in 1962, a solitary transistor).

Finding a few copies available, I fell to ordering myself the first volume of John F. Wilson's Ferranti history as referred to above - couldn't resist at £4 plus postage, others remain available, as well as inexpensive copies of volume 2 but that begins in 1975 when the parts of the UK electronics industry that interest me had mostly passed away. It's a weighty book indeed, comparable in proportions to The Setmakers for those who know that very useful work: I've only dipped into it since my copy arrived yesterday. Domestic radio and television were of course a small and usually unprofitable aspect of Ferranti, and as expected they're dealt with in few pages and then mostly from a business perspective: there's much more about early computing, and production figures from West Gorton, 1951-63, are included; 97 computers in that period, including 26 of the original Pegasus and 12 of the Mark II.

One intriguing innovation I hadn't heard of, perhaps a product in advance of its time, was Basil de Ferranti's early 1950s fridge-heater, a heat pump using the energy extracted from its fridge compartment to heat the domestic hot water supply, where it was claimed to reduce heating costs by two-thirds. The Science Museum has an example,

https://collection.sciencemuseumgrou...-heater-fridge ,

but it seems to have met with very little of a welcome in the marketplace.

Paul