"The British Ferrograph Recorder Co Ltd."
The move from Tottenham, London in the late 1940's was to this brand new purpose built factory, based in South Shields, and proved to be very successful.
The area had been hit by unemployment so the arrival of this major employer was a boon.
The company in turn were able to recruit and train an excellent workforce, whose skills and dedication contributed greatly to the excellent reputation that Ferrograph gained for the quality and reliability of its products..
IMAGES FROM THE EARLY SIMONSIDE PRODUCTION LINE.
A Pressing Business.
Hydraulic Press.
The first impression Ferrograph owners have of their recorder is the overall weight. The steel deck panel, which is produced on this hydraulic press is largely responsible for this weight.
Ferrograph's' were built to last. Which is why the recorders were said to be built like a battleship.
Stove Enameling.
After being punched and formed by the press, the deck plates were sprayed and then put through the ovens to bake the paint on.
Coil Winding.
All the manufacturing processes were done in house. This ensured continuity of supply, quality, and reliability.
Every mechanical part of a quality tape recorder is precision made.
Flywheels are being dynamically balanced to ensure they run true. Note the depth of the flywheel with all the mass being concentrated at the outer rim. This ensures the energy is stored in the flywheel and prevents variations in loading from affecting the speed consistency.
This results in less Wow & Flutter being generated.
Whilst most tape recorder companies in those days usually bought record /play heads from specialist tape head manufacturers.
Ferrograph, developed their own equipment and method of production, here we can see the head grinding machine developed by Ferrograph.
Incidentally, these heads were the hardest wearing of all.
Much of the assembly process was carried out by hand, usually on a small production line basis with each operative being fully responsible for their own range of components.
This method resulted in workers having a sense of involvement and contributed in no small way to the excellent quality and reliability of their products.
Accuracy in the alignment of the record, play and erase heads was very important, they had all to be to the exact standards laid down.
Head Alignment
Height: To ensure that the head complies with the exacting measurements to ensure accurate track positioning.
Azimuth: To ensure that the head gap is exactly vertical, otherwise high frequency response and compatibility will suffer.
Zenith: The third adjustment to ensure that the head is exactly vertical in the forward / back plane, this ensures even contact of the tape with the head, and avoids dropouts and poor electrical output.
Final Response Checks.
Finally, after all that care in assembly and adjustments the final frequency response check before dispatch, should result in a perfect machine. Bang on spec.
Mystery Process.
Can anyone hazard a guess at this activity?
Looks to me like some kind of milling machine, but for what?
Testing "YD" series recorders in the mid 1950's ready for shipment. The rack equipment shown was
supplied to the Police & Fire departments, for monitoring telephone calls.
Note: Gentleman shown believed to be George Jolley.
Left: Test lab at the Ferrograph Simonside Works in the mid 1960's
THE PICTURES BELOW ARE FROM SIMONSIDE IN THE 1970'S. NOTE THE ASSEMBLY OF THE SERIES 7 RECORDERS.
( PICTURES FROM A FERROGRAPH BROCHURE COURTESY OF BOB MARRIOTT.)
These photographs taken from a 1970's Ferrograph publicity brochure, show the reliance still on manual assembly rather than the full automation we know today.
However, this may have contributed to the high cost of the machines and made it harder to compete with the influx of foreign tape recorders.
Michael
Furmedge contacted me with the following contribution.
If
it is of any interest I worked in a Ferrograph service office that was in
Ferrograph’s
were used by Armand and Michaela Dennis on Safaris, and they were always returned
to us for service, and on one occasion there were two dead mice in the recorder.
How they ever got in I do not know unless it was while the deck was open to get
rid of the sand.
Needless
to say because of the sand, the heads always needed changing, and idler wheels
were always wrecked. Although they used to take spares with them, such was the
quality of the idlers that in those days when checking wow and flutter it always
took maybe 5 or 6 before we found the best. The odd thing was that an idler that
was a reject on one machine would work fine on another. ce la Vie.
Kind Regards Michael
I started work as a trainee Test Engineer straight from school in 1969. I was surprised but very gratified to find they were a fairly enlightened employer encouraging study by paying for day release and evening classes. In spite of that shortly after I started the company announced redundancies which gave me a few sleepless nights, until a colleague assured me that (since I was being paid buttons ) I was probably safe. He was right and although redundancies turned out to be an annual event, and when I left Ferrograph it was my own decision to do so.
Having said that it was an enlightened company, I remember it was so enlightened it (inadvertently) employed a colour blind electrician (in the days of black/red/green mains wiring). I have an abiding memory of watching as he blew himself off a ladder while connecting-up a fuse box.
My first job was in the Test Department, performing a preliminary inspection of Series 7 tape recorders which would emerge through a hole in the wall from the factory floor. Having been assembled and put through a set of preliminary operational tests, the units were then passed down a conveyor belt to the Test Dept. where I more or less repeated all the checks done by the person on the other side of the wall, except I was in a much quieter environment.
Accepted units were passed along the line to (at least while I was there) Anne Dale who performed the final head alignment and frequency response checks. This consisted of recording a signal onto a tape using the recorder under test. The tape was then replayed and the head output compared against the original signal. I clearly remember that this check was always carried out using a new reel of tape which was never reused for that purpose. The tapes did have other uses (checking fast forward and rewind operation) but eventually the tapes were handed out to those lucky enough to be thought deserving. Which was quite a privilege thinking back to the cost or reel-reel tapes in those days.
Following final alignment the units were passed along the belt to someone who did a final visual inspection, at which point any tiny scratches on the brushed aluminium or Perspex, would receive the (reluctant) attention of some hapless body from the assembly line who would be dragged in to make good his negligence, all the time protesting that it had been in pristine condition when it left him.
To be fair, the people on the shop floor producing the recorders were working on a cramped noisy dirty shop-floor. The lighting was poor and their workspace quite unsuited to producing a quality product-quite amazing then they actually did.
One bone of contention was the Test Dept's insistence that all recorders underwent a "Bump Test". This was a table whose top was hinged at one end and the other (loose) end would be rapidly raised by a motor-driven cam and then even more rapidly lowered as the table top fell with a bang. I seem to remember that this test was performed of five minutes (supposedly simulating the units transport to its owner). I don't remember any units falling pieces following the test (since it was performed just prior to being pushed back through the hole in the wall) hardly any units maintained the preliminary head alignment.
The Test Department:
The Test Department was self-contained unit, presided over by Jack Richardson ("Mr. Richardson to you"). He was a small dapper mustached old style gent (ex-RAF) who insisted that everything got tested and it wasn't his fault if something failed. In spite of his size he was ferocious in protecting his staff from the all-too-frequent criticisms of the production lines.
Whilst in the Test Dept. I was gradually moved around and exposed to other product testing, including the dreaded idler wheel testing. Since the Series 7 was offered in a variety of three speed configurations ( everything from 15/16 ths. up to 15"ips. there was a need for a QA of individual idler wheels to cut down on the final testing for wow and flutter.
Although in theory, all the wheels were identical some produced less wow and flutter than others. The unlucky individual assigned to grading the wheels had a stripped down tape deck which could be stopped and an idler wheel dropped in or removed.
This tape deck was connected to a wow & flutter meter and the wheel assigned a grade-the lower the tape speed the greater the need to have a good wheel, the higher the tape speed the less apparent would be the wow & flutter.
There would be a stack of hundreds of idler wheels and the work was so tedious that it wasn't unknown for individuals to lose track of which stack were good or less good, and consequently mixed up the wheels. The mix-up would be picked up at final test, but, (since everyone had to take their turn at idler wheel grading) there was never any finger-pointing.
After about 18 months I was considered sufficiently experience to be allowed to assist in final assembly of tape decks. Although supposedly a position of trust I felt it to be something of a come-down to be ejected from the Test Dept. (I was still very young and impressionable). Looking back it was a good grounding in real hands-on engineering and I was taught a great deal which gave me a practical view on the theory I was being taught on day-release and evening classes.
Ernie's assistant was his charge-hand Mike Magrs (pronounced Mars). Mike was tall, handsome, well groomed man, who in his free time was a semi-pro singer in the style of Elvis, but well before Elvis impersonators were in vogue. I remember he had a gorgeous Gibson Hummingbird guitar which was rare then and extremely even collectable now.
The tape recorders consisted of three sub-assemblies:
Tape Deck
Amplifier (pre-amps and power amps-although some models were available without power amp stages.
Power Supply
Quality Control
Obviously a problem for our quality chappie. The man in the picture is believed to be Alf Calthrop from the Testing dept. If anyone can identify any of these other workers, I would be happy to include their names.
As my electronics knowledge (theory and practice) grew, I was transferred to the "Echo Sounder" production line, setting up, calibrating and fault finding on the small in-shore echo sounders.
These worked by transmitting a pulse and measuring the time taken for it to be returned. Dividing that time by the speed of sound gave the distance-between the transducer (on the bottom of the boat) and the sea bottom. The depth was displayed on a slowly moving reel of special paper, coated with a layer of aluminium over a black backing, on which was pre-printed a series of lines indicating depth.
The depth was displayed by printing a small mark on the paper using a high voltage pulse via a stylus that was constantly spinning across the paper.The same principle was used by Clive Sinclair on his ZX Printer-except users didn't get the electric shock, which was an all too frequent penalty for echo-sounder engineers, who weren't watching where they put their fingers.
At some point during the annual round of redundancies the management took the view that Quality Control needed a more modern approach than that practiced under Mr. Richardson, and to everyone's horror he was "let go" and Test Dept. disbanded.
A new Quality Manager brought in sample testing. This initially speeded up production to the great delight of the management, however the consequences was that the new Quality Dept. was able to react to defects only long after things were already going wrong.
Many employees, while I was there, were firmly of the opinion that the new quality system precipitated the demise of Ferrograph due to the loss of product quality in an already highly-competitive market.
My thanks to Drummond for sharing his experiences with us.
