Friday, February 09, 2007

Telpro Kids!

The only picture I have of me working on televisions! here I am with Brian quality checking some Telpros. OK...this was a set up... the photo went in a management magazine, so the televisions were not actually connected (note the wires!) We were given a couple of newly ironed white coats to make it look good. (In reality, I wore a short grey dust coat!)
Do you like the long hair and flared jeans?

Back in the 1970's Telefusion launched it's own version of the Decca Bradford television called the 'Telpro'. The circuit was identical to the Decca 2230, but the chassis and components were totally different. At first production started with the black and white TV called the M101 followed shortly after by the Telpro Colour Receiver.

Production started at Cobden Mill (where I worked) then later moved to a new factory at Kearsley. I remember the very first employed production line girls (Janet and Susan) fresh out of school who later became managers on the production lines (where are they now?)
I was involved a bit with the design of the Telpro by telling Gerald, the design engineer and radio amateur, who I was pally with at the time, that it was not a good idea to use cheap foreign transistors, especially in the video output drivers! I got them changed to proper ones!!

I worked at the Heywood warehouse later and set up a Quality Control system for incoming goods from different suppliers, including Telpro. Managed to get them to change a few things at the factory like the convergence yolk, which cause havoc to the convergence of colours after the sets had been moved.

The Telpro was a good little earner for Telefusion and even produced a prototypes of a new model based on the Decca 80 /100 system.

Sadly...Telefusion was taken over by Visionhire, who didn't want to know when it came to producing televisions, so promply closed down the factory at Kearsley!
The end of an era!

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