GEC Telecommunications, Spon Street

Yes Rob, the Express lift company was created by GEC Northampton in 1917.

Ooh, I never knew that - thank you!

I know that there used to be an old house that fronted Spon Street at the corner of Crow Lane, and its gardens were gradually taken over by factories. I know that it was recessed from the road slightly. I know that it grew a much later extension partly over the front and down the Crow Lane side. You can partly see it in this great photo by Fourtoes. My theory is that it was Georgian and built for Sir Thomas Geary MP. It looks like it was still standing after the war but damaged. I don't expect anyone to remember it but can anyone remember talk of it by their much older colleagues when they were there? Post copied from topic Old House on Corner of Spon Street and Crow Lane on 14th Apr 2025 8:21 pm

A nice GEC item that was on ebay, until I clicked on 'Buy it now' ;

That's a super item, 20A - very tactile looking!

Out of the blue my YouTube feed recommended GEC 405 line Television factory Coventry 1960. Apologies if this has already been mentioned here.

No need to apologise, I enjoyed watching it again after a few years. Some of the places in the factory and those huge windows were quite recognisable from when I worked there over 20 years later - and in fact some of the technology had not moved on very much in that time! But still, very happy memories of my time at Spon Street.

Despite doing TV repairs as a lucrative hobby from the mid 70s, I didn't realise pcbs were used in TVs as early as 1960. All the TVs from the earlier era that I encountered had hand-wired steel chassis.

I was pleasantly surprised, too, to see "our" GEC using PCBs as early as 1960 (so presumably before that, also), but my wife watched the whole video with interest last night, as from the late 1980s she worked in production and ran the flow soldering machine herself - and Bev said that the basic techniques had not changed significantly in three decades!