[NJARC] The Sylvania Tube Crusher

[Rob Reifenheiser]

Al, that explains it!  I always wash away those marking with regret!
On Jan 20, 2015 8:19 PM, "Al Klase" <ark at ar88.net> wrote:

> Just remember
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>
> _________________________________________________________
>
>  Folks,
>
> Apparently there was a major scandal involving counterfeit and recycled
> tubes in the 1950's.  You may have noticed that, if you try to wash a lot
> of the miniature tubes of that era, the factory markings come right off.
> My understanding is that that was done on purpose to prevent resale of used
> tubes.
>
> Al
>
> Al Klase – N3FRQ
> Jersey City, NJhttp://www.skywaves.ar88.net/
>
> On 1/20/2015 1:47 PM, Thomas Lee wrote:
>
>
>
> Thought this might be of interest to some.
>
>
>  The Sylvania Tube Crusher
> <http://hackaday.com/2015/01/20/retrotechtacular-the-sylvania-tube-crusher/> by
> Kristina Panos <http://hackaday.com/author/cornbreadninja/>
>
> This week, we're switching off the 'Tube and taking a field trip to
> Emporium, Pennsylvania, home of the Sylvania vacuum tube manufacturing
> plant <http://vintagetubeservices.com/sylvania-factory-tour/>. Now, a lot
> of companies will tell you that they test every single one of their
> products, ensuring that only the best product makes it into the hands
> of John Q. Public. We suspect that few of them actually do this,
> especially these days. After all, the more reliable the product, the longer
> it will be before they can sell you a new one.
>
> [image: sylvania-tube-crusher-thumb]For Sylvania, one of the largest tube
> manufacturers of the golden age, this meant producing a lot of duds. A
> mountain of them, in fact, as you can see in the picture above.
> This article
> <http://www.rfcafe.com/references/popular-electronics/foil-tube-forgers-january-1957-popular-electronics.htm> from
> the January 1957 issue of *Popular Electronics* vilifies forgers who used
> all kinds of methods to obtain defective tubes. They would then re-brand
> them and pass them off as new, which was damaging to Sylvania's good name
> and reputation.
>
> In addition to offering a reward for turning in known tube forgers,
> Sylvania did the most reasonable thing they could think of to quash
> the gray market, which was building a tube-crushing machine. Pulverizing
> the substandard tubes made sure that there were no "factory seconds"
> available to those fraudsters. After crushing shovelful after shovelful of
> tubes, the glass splinters were removed through a flotation separation
> process, and the heavy metals were recovered.
>
> Did we get you all hot about tubes? Here's how Mullard made their EF80
> model
> <http://hackaday.com/2014/08/05/retrotechtacular-we-heard-you-like-tubes-so-heres-a-film-about-tube-tubes-from-the-webtubes/>
> .
>
>
>
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