Pye: Radio
Note: This is a sub-section of Pye
WWI Experience of the manufacture of components gave W. G. Pye and Co the technical knowledge that it needed to develop a "wireless" set when the first UK broadcasts were made by the BBC in 1922.
1922 A radio branch of the company was formed by T. A. W. Robinson. The company started a wireless components factory at Church Path, Chesterton and the series of receivers that it made were given positive reviews by Popular Wireless magazine.
1924 Harold Pye, son of the founder, and Edward Appleton, his former tutor at St. John's College, designed a new series of receivers which proved even more saleable.
1928 W. G. Pye offered the radio branch of the business to Charles Orr Stanley who borrowed £60,000 from the bank having demonstrated a portable radio to them[1]. Pye Radio Ltd was formed to acquire the radio business[2]; Stanley went on to establish a chain of small component-manufacturing factories across East Anglia.
1929 Partnership between W. G. Pye, T. A. Robinson and H. J. Pye under the style of W. G. Pye and Co was dissolved[3]
1939 B. J. Edwards specified the "Pye strip" of five EF50 valves for a high-performance amplifier for a 1939 television set. E. V. Appleton remembered seeing it at the Radio Olympia exhibition and used it for development of low-level radar. The EF50 valve was made by Philips in Holland; Charles Stanley sent three trucks and snatched the remaining valves from Eindhoven before the Germans arrived. Pye had the first airborne radar operational in 1940, and developed Asdic for mass production.
1946 Pye Ltd acquired W. G. Pye and Co, of Granta Works, Cambridge[4]
See Also
Sources of Information
- Biography of Charles Stanley, ODNB [1]