Title
A binder containing reports produced by Mullard Limited numbered between 375 and 397 and technical notes between 404 and 479
Reference
MUL/A/3
Production date
-09-1959 - -04-1961
Creator
- Mullard LimitedBiographyBiography
Mullard Limited was initially founded as the Mullard Radio Valve Company by Captain Stanley Robert Mullard. The new company was financed by the Radio Communication Co in order to compete with Marconi, especially in the field of maritime radio, and its valves were soon adopted for use by the Admiralty. The business was boosted by the beginning of broadcasting in the UK during the early 1920s and would go onto form Mullard Wireless Service Co to market the valves in produced. Despite this by 1924 the company was in need of additional capital as well as additional technical resources, in part to meet the demands of the newly formed BBC, and as result Mullard sold half the company to Philips. As part of this Philips established a UK based subsidiary, Philips Electrical which held its shares in Mullard, and in 1925 Mullard was register as a private company. In 1927 Philips acquired the rest of the company and in 1929 Captain Mullard stepped down as managing director of both it and the Mullard Wireless Service Co.
Following the departure of its founder the company continued to expand, beginning production of cathode ray tubes in 1936, opening new production facilities and in 1938 acquiring E.K. Cole Ltd, until the Second World War. During the war Mullard was considered a foreign owned company and, although it produced a large number of conventional valve designs, it was not part of any government funded research projects, such as those into microwave frequencies. Partly as a result of this, and partly due to a lack of a coherent UK research facility, born from a reliance on Philips’ Eindhoven facility, the company formed the Mullard Research Laboratories in 1946. This new facility replaced the existing structure of fragmented laboratories in each of the production facilities and would therefore allow the company to participate in research projects that received funding from the British Government. At the same time Philips had a reorganisation of its subsidiaries and Mullard became a wholly owned subsidiary of Philips Electrical Industries Limited which in turn was a subsidiary of Philips.
By 1951 the company’s products had expanded beyond the valves it originally produced and in order to reflect this its name was changed to Mullard Limited. At around the same time the company also began to produce its first transistors, which would eventually be produced at their own facility in Southampton, and took over the running of British Tungsram, another Philips owned company. Along with this expansion in 1957 Mullard also helped to set up the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory. Throughout this period the production of transistors had continued to grow, with new models being introduced in 1953, and by 1960 Mullard produced 75% of all British semiconductors, by volume, as well as a number of other electronics components. In 1962 the company formed a joint venture with GEC, Associated Semiconductor Manufacturers, in order to combine development and production, mostly of transistors, but this only lasted until 1969 when GEC pulled out. Expansion continued through the rest of the 1960s, with the Mullard Space Science Laboratory being opened in 1966 and increased production capacity, with one factory producing one million colour television tubes by 1968.
Despite the success enjoyed during the 1960s, by the 1970s Mullard began to suffer some difficulties, with factories being closed in 1972, 1975 and 1979, and production being cut back in other areas. In 1977 the Mullard Research Laboratory was renamed the Philips Research Laboratory. Despite further factory closures in the 1980s Mullard also began to produce teletext decoders and video discs for the Philips laser disk system.
Philips continued to use the Mullard name until 1988 when the subsidiary’s name was changed to Philips Components Limited. The semiconductor facilities were transferred to Philips Semiconductors, later NXP Semiconductors, with the Southampton site closing.
Scope and Content
A binder containing the following reports produced by Mullard Research Laboratories:
- 375 'Television Video Detectors', November 1959
- M.R.L. 377 'The Calculation of Transit Times in Junction Transistors when the Mobilities are not Constant', September 1959
- 390 'Results of Measurements of Samples of the V.H.F. Transistor VX8510', November 1959
- M.R.L. 396 'The Silicon Controlled Rectifier a Comparison with Alternative Devices', January 1960
- M.R.L. 397 'Measurement of Tellurium Vapour Pressure using Electrical Discharges', January 1960
- Technical Note 404 'Transistors in Tape Relay Amplifiers: Some Noise Considerations', March 1960
- Technical Note 408 'The V.H.F. Medium Power Transistor VX8511: Measurements and Associated Problems', March 1960
- Technical Note 416 'A Test Circuit for the OA79 as a Television Sound Detector', May 1960
- Technical Note 417 'A Note on Some New Devices and Their Possible Application in Computers', May 1960
- Technical Note 422 'A Tunnel Diode Relaxation Oscillator and its Application as a Frequency Divider', July 1960
- Technical Note 424 'The determination of Oxygen in Silicon and germanium by the Measurement of Optical Absorption', June 1960
- Technical Note 431 'Tolerances Associated with the Operation of the Crowe Storage Cell in the Coincident Current Mode', July 1960
- Technical Note 433 'The Production of Precision Bore Silica' August 1960
- Technical Note 434 'Transistors for Television Receiver Video Amplifiers: - Maximum Voltage, Current and Power Requirements (405 Line System) August 1960
- Technical Note 440 'A Crystal Puller for Volatile-Element Compounds', September 1960
- Technical Note 445 'Eighteenth Conference on Electron Tube Research', October 1960
- Technical Note 449 'IRE-AIEE Solid State Device Research Conference', January 1961
- Technical Note 450 'The Use of PNPN Type Transistors for Field Time Base Oscillators', October 1960
- Technical Note 451 'An Effect of Transistor Lead Inductance', November 1960
- Technical Note 453 'The Transistor Requirement for Television I.F. Stages', November 1960
- Technical Note 457 'A Contactless Resistivity Measurement Apparatus', December 1960
- Technical Note 465 'Noise in Electronic Systems - Tutorial Notes', January 1961
- Technical Note 467 'A Note on the Calculation of the Breakdown Voltage of Graded PN Junctions', February 1960
- Technical Note 469 'A Possible System of Computer Storage using Tunnel Diodes', February 1961
- Technical Note 474 'Emitter-Coupled Multivibrator Circuits', March 1961
- Technical Note 479 'Use of Four Probe Devices for Measuring Rapidly Varying Resistivities', April 1961
Extent
Single Binder
Physical description
Typed reports bound together
Language
English
Level of description
ITEM
Repository name
Science Museum, London
Conditions governing access
Open Access
Conditions governing Reproduction
Copies may be supplied in accordance with current copyright legislation and Science Musuem Group terms and conditions