WI: Imperial Preference in 1932?

perfectgeneral

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In the 1920s, and by now trading under the Heeley name, Portass turned its attention to building bodies for the car, lorry, ambulance and bus markets but, as these had become an increasingly "in-house" activity for the chassis manufactures, Portass diverted into the manufacture of small machine tools for the hobby and light-industrial market.
Following the founder's death in 1924 (and almost certainly at the point where diversification into machine tools was taking place), the business was split between his sons Fred and Stanley. Fred ran "F. W. Portass", a company that concentrated exclusively on tiny lathes and shapers badged as "Adept", while Stanley made only larger machines with his business eventually becoming, around 1953 (or earlier), "Charles Portass & Son". Stanley was based by the river Sheaf in the "Buttermere Works" (the building still stands, in Buttermere Road, off Abbeydale Road, near Millhouses) while F.W.Portass was located in Sellers Street - again off Abbeydale Road, but a mile closer to the city centre.
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Educational and light engineering machine tool companies took up some of the slack from the larger concerns that were struggling to keep production going. The government had created a new market in 'machining' classes for the fourteen and fifteen year-olds. Each school required a machining instructor/teacher and a workshop equipped with all the expected machine tools. These teachers soon became famous for having less than the right number of fingers, either from before starting out as a teacher or after. Shop safety was a repeatedly underlined part of the curriculum. Local education authorities started to insist that machine tools be supplied with enclosed drive motors and gears. 'Practical' young lads learnt a new respect for precision and calculation. For those that grasped the principles of machining might even get to use a 'proper' machine like the Drummond M-type or Colchester 'Master' lathe.

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The wider world awaiting
 
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perfectgeneral

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Mullard, the UK arm of Phillips electronics.

The British Valve Association had hoped to limit the components in each vacuum tube in order to charge more, but the UK government were unhappy that the cartel were limiting competition so much that US valves were half the price.

How could British valve companies hope to export (or even limit imports) if they couldn't manufacture to a competitive price? As a new and growing industry the government were happy to lend (if no bank could be found with funds) and exempt taxation on new plant and machinery investment, but it must be designed to manufacture at a competitive price and be used in this country. For British jobs and profits that would lead to taxes paid to the UK exchequer. The board of trade and the treasury worked closely to review suitable new factories in all types of industries.

Furthermore the treasury undertook to forgo taxation on up to 5% of profits if they were reinvested into research and development of new products and processes patented by companies based (and paying tax) in the UK. Smaller companies employed research units in co-operation to qualify for this tax break and keep up with larger concerns.
M-OV (Marconi-Osram Valve Company) was a British manufacturer of thermionic valves (vacuum tubes). It was a subsidiary of the (British) General Electric Company Ltd. The company was founded in 1919, when the valve making interests of GEC (Osram) and the Marconi Company were combined. In 1929, Marconi sold its interest in the company to the Gramophone Company, a predecessor of EMI.

In 1932, M-O V acquired two disused cotton mills at Shaw, Oldham where it established factories to produce valves and cathode ray tubes. The two mills named Cape and Duke, were bought from the Lancashire Cotton Corporation for the princely sum of £7,000. Cape mill was used as the main production facility at Shaw, with the adjacent Duke mill remaining mostly unused, except for quality control, until the development of the TT11, VT90 micropup and CV122.

Production at Shaw and wartime uses:

Cape
VT104 and VT105 for the T1154 transmitter.
VR99, VR100, VR101 and VR103 for the R1155 receiver.

Duke
TT11 for the TR1143 fighter set.
VT90 micropup used in airborne radar.
CV122 used in proximity fuses

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Micropup VT90
9KV peak anode voltage, 100W anode dissipation with forced-air cooling. Useful in pulsed operation to above 300MHz.
Used in British ASV MK2 airborne radar and in the US sets SCR-521 and ASE-1.
It is thought that the Ministry of Supply and the armed services had backed pre-war research into high frequency valves at Duke, Shaw. M-O V had a design sharing deal with RCA at the time and any results should have been shared with them, so it is likely that the Official Secrets Act had been invoked to prevent this. A bit rich since it was a 1933 RCA paper that initiated this development work. Vacuum Tubes Of Small Dimensions For Use At Extremely High Frequencies - by B.J. Thompson and G.M. Rose, Jr. The military sought higher frequencies for secure mobile communications and then for RDF devices (100MHz = 3 metres, 1 GHz = 30cm, 10 GHz = 3cm). Generation signals of sufficient power for RDF at these frequencies proved impractical until the innovation of the resonant cavity magnetron in mid 1939.
 
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I missed this too!

A tax break on investment plus a partnership over electricity distribution might get the modernisation work done, but what about through routing trains? New legislation allowing rival companies to use all your tracks? Pass the parcel will continue unless some neutral party allocates track time fairly. SB and his party will hate this, true, but the cellular system breaks up communication. Merging into four companies has improved matters, but the alternative to a track monopoly is a railway monopoly (British Rail). Free market thinkers will like that even less. This is the lesser of two evils. Status Quo? Where is the improvement from investment in that? You could argue that only the new electric routes (mainline) need be nationalised, but that does limit the through routed freight benefit. This limit on through routing might justify ending the universal carrier requirement. It still seems a bit of a fudge though.

I'm not sure if this solution works in the British context, but it might be useful:

Have the government propose the railway companies pool their tracks to a jointly-owned national one in return for shares in proportion to the track value they give up. The new company will manage the track itself, including electric routes and connections, and will set national standards for use of its lines. The government provides investment capital to this company for electrification/modernization. The railway companies get equal use of track according to a standardized system that charges them accordingly. Track profits in excess of maintenance and reinvestment get returned to the railway companies as dividends.

The track management company itself gets exempted from taxation in return for specific requirements:

1. A minimum reinvestment rate.
2. A transparent, semi-cooperative management system that ensures competitive bidding for track scheduling rights.
3. Establishment of a system for equally and fairly integrating new track lines or new railway companies that do not possess track management shares.
4. An external auditing and oversight system. (Does not have to be a government one, however.)

The railway companies are happy, because now their track has been converted into a dividend-producing asset, they can operate throughout Britain, and the government is upgrading their income potential with new investment, which if done through lending is at very cheap terms in order to make this an attractive deal.

British industry is happy, because now there's both new investment and more competition in the transport sector. British labour (small L) is happy because it means more work. Liberals are happy about the modernization and fiscal policy, while the Conservatives are happy that the state role is minimized and railways remain in private hands. Labour mutters that nationalization would be better, but presumably they can be ignored.

It might be possible that this sort of model could be adapted for electrical distribution as well, though I have no idea whether there could be an effective competitive bidding system for electrical generation in the period, especially regarding a flexible response to demand on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.
 
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