Rediffusion History - Lez Miller

We had been in the habit of borrowing a car battery from the garage on the odd occasion when a van would not start due to some item of equipment being left switched on overnight. One morning I went to the garage to collect a battery for this purpose and was told by the newly appointed foreman that they could no longer offer this service. I went to another garage and explained the position to their foreman and came away with a battery with no trouble. I then telephoned Mr Burton, told him the story and that I would prefer use this other garage from now on. He gave his agreement and that is what we did.

On yet another occasion we suffered a very heavy downpour one summer evening and the road outside our control room was flooded. Water found its way into our semi basement control room and into the equipment bays. There were mains distribution boxes mounted horizontally in the bottom of these bays and I feared flashes and bangs. I called the Fire Brigade and they sent an appliance and started to pump the water out. It made very little difference and I asked if they could fit a larger suction hose. They didn’t have one on the appliance and could not leave the site to fetch one unless permission was granted by their control and if they did it would mean a long journey around the one-way street system. As the Fire Station was only about 3 hundred yards away by foot, I sent two men to fetch it for them. It was a shorter hose so we took it in by a side door, took up some floor boards and dropped the, ‘Elephant Foot End’, into the cellar adjacent to the control room. This soon cleared the problem.

The Jersey repeaters had vertically mounted chassis and the valves were horizontal in their bases. They were housed in brick kiosks and some of the doors were not a good fit, (later I had all doors replaced with decent metal units that became available), before this we sometimes had problems when it snowed as snow flakes drifted in and on coming into contact with the valve glass envelope resulted in a cracked valve. The repeater stopped working and a replacement had to be quickly fitted to maintain service, usually in adverse weather conditions.

Later all repeaters had to be modified. Continual working caused the electrode support frames within the horizontal valves, to sag and collapse. The repeaters were taken in batches to Regional workshops where they were modified by turning the position of the valve holders so that the frames that held the internal electrodes of the valves were in a north and south position, thus giving more support.

Soon after this, simple time switches were supplied so that all repeaters in each kiosk were switched off at night. Each time switch had a by pass switch to cope with irregularities of transmissions and summer/ winter changeovers as it wasn’t always possible to alter all switches in time. In practise the time switch operation was bypassed most of the time.

When the G M retired our old friend Peter Patten came along to replace him. This was good news for most of us but Mr Burton and Mr McGill took the opportunity to leave.
There was different atmosphere and things moved on.

There was a severe shortage of colour sets and we had a long list of clients awaiting them. RVS Chessington had a large stock but not enough transport to deliver them. As one of my outside technicians was a retained Fireman and held a goods vehicle driving licence, I obtained permission and we rented a large covered lorry to collected them and bring them direct to our branch, this happened twice.

I installed our first Reditune model in a store at Folkestone, it was the heavy, early, reel to reel model that rewound itself and started again, it was the only one of that type that we ever saw.

With others I went to Coombe Lane to attend conferences and some interesting remarks came from the floor. We were always complaining about the EHT transformers being a constant source of trouble and remember that on one occasion somebody who should have known better replied that if they were made to be more reliable, a lot of people would soon be out of a job. Later, during a shortage of aerial receivers we were supplied with some Sony receivers, these were sold or rented out and we saw no more of them apart from two that had a minor trouble, the aerial socket panel rivets had to be replaced. Obviously the Japs could build in reliability.

A decision was made to up date our network by using co-axial cables between the major kiosks. Contractors were engaged by Region, trench work with salt glazed ducting was installed and the four cables were drawn in. New repeaters were supplied by Rediffusion Research and as these had a single output, three, ‘splitters’ were used to connect to the four outgoing feeders. These new repeaters used transistors, were stabilised and much smaller that the old Jersey type. Old racks were removed together with the stabilised transformers and new smaller racks were fitted.

We were informed that it had been decided to build new purpose designed premises in Coombe Valley Road so that everything was under one roof and work was soon started. It became apparent that the branches of Dover, Deal and Folkestone would all be brought together. It was by now very easy for customers to receive transmissions off normal aerials and as sets became more reliable the need for a wired network was not so necessary. I had managed to upset our Regional manager, Mr Johnson, and I could see the writing on the wall. It came as no real surprise when I was asked to go to see him at his office in Canterbury where he told me that as Albert Gill was senior to me in length of service, he was to be the E I C and I could become a salesman or take redundancy. I thought it over for a week or two and then I said that I would become a salesman provided that I could demonstrate and install my own sales throughout the district as having seen some of the previous efforts I felt that I could do a better job. He would not agree to this and so I took the redundancy.

I found a better life outside of Rediffusion, started two private pension plans leaving the Rediffusion one paid up. I was able to retire at the age of 60 and I have continued to receive my Rediffusion pension on a monthly basis since opting for it at 65. I have had far more from it than was ever paid in and escaped the Robert Maxwell problem that ruined the pensions of a number of my former colleagues.
I enjoyed most of my time with Rediffusion (SE Ltd:) but it was apparent that for a very long time this region seemed to be a poor relation of a much larger, professional organisation.

Lez Miller 2009