WW2 Canadian Wireless Valve Testers

[David Dunlop]

The Canadian Marconi Company was a major player in the design and production of the Wireless Sets No. 9 and 52. Both of these sets made extensive use of British designed valves, to the point where I believe these valves went into production with CMC in Canada.

The tricky bit with these valves is the pin layout in the valve bases. These layouts are not compatible with standard North American valve sockets and therefore, by extension, cannot be tested by any of the North American Valve Testers of the day. But they needed to be tested sooner or later at any number of levels and locations.

So that begs the question. What valve testers would have been used in Canada during and after World War Two that were capable of testing British designed valves? Were British testers imported and modified to 110AC Mains to do this work, or did one or more valve tester manufacturers in North America modify their products to handle the British valves? This latter option would in theory be a fairly straightforward job.

David

[Rod Salter]

David,
In the last week, I read and saw photos of an adaptor that plugged into one of the testers sockets an oblong box with 5 or 6 sockets.

I can't remember where in the WWW I was.
I may have saved a pic, maybe in my computer somewhere

They are out there somewhere

rod

[David Dunlop]

I had not thought of an adapter at all, Rod. It might even prove “universal” to a number of valve testers with a minimum of instructions.

David

[Bruce MacMillan]

One of the tube testers I have is the TV-7 C/U made in the early 1950s. Still has the Canadian military ID plate. Mounted on the inside lid is an adaptor box for British and other weird tubes (valves). It is possible that British testers like AVO were sent to Canada. They typically operated from 105V to 250V, 50 - 500 Hz.

We still had AVO products in our calibration lab at BC Tel in the 1990s.

[David Dunlop]

Hello Bruce.

Any chance you could post some photos and specs for that adapter?

I poked around the net a bit last evening and quite a few adapters turned up. Most, however, were single tube types (or sets of same) with little or no information as to what was being adapted. A lot of them also seemed to be for the later postwar miniature style all glass valves to be accommodated in older test equipment.

A few caught my eye as being small square or rectangular metal boxes fitted with four or more sockets and a long cord. The end of the cord had a base plug on it that likely fitted a common socket on most testers. Again, no information to be found on what tubes were being accommodated. Be nice to find an “ XYZ Company, Model 123” that was identified as being for the British tubes to be tested on North American equipment and supporting documentation.

While I think of it, did the massive import of wireless equipment from North America during the war create a similar, reverse, problem in England I wonder?

David

[Bruce MacMillan]

Here are photos of the adaptor, a schematic and the ID tag. As you can see it's pre Paul Hellyer.