Valvo
The Valvo company was founded shortly after radio was introduced in Germany in 1924 by the X-ray tube company CHF Müller ( Carl Heinrich Florenz Müller , called Röntgenmüller ) as the Hamburg radio tube factory in Hamburg . At first it produced amplifier and transmitter electron tubes (discontinued in 1975) for the then young and expanding broadcasting technology.
description
The name Valvo, derived from the English word valve (valve, electron tube), stood for new types of tubes that were so widespread that they were sometimes known as Valvo Normal , like the normal tube triode built in 1924 . In 1927, CHF Müller and the radio tube factory joined the Philips group. As early as the 1930s, the production program was expanded to include additional components such as picture tubes , electrolytic capacitors , loudspeakers , high-ohmic resistors and special tubes.
As special tubes z. B. manufactured: Ignitrons , thyratrons and high-vacuum high-voltage rectifier tubes, gas-filled counter tubes ( Dekatrone ) and high-vacuum counter tubes, glow light indicator tubes ( Nixie tube ), high-performance transmitter tubes , image recording tubes ( Vidikone and Orthikone ), high- pressure photo resistors (gas-filled and photo resistors . ) .
After a huge new production building was put into operation in the spring of 1939, Valvo was converted into an armaments factory during the Second World War and mainly produced radio technology and electronics for the Air Force. The tube production was stopped in 1940. After the bombing of Operation Gomorrah in July 1943, the company relocated part of its production from the main plant in the Hamburg district of Lokstedt to Weißwasser in Saxony and to Horneburg in the Stade district. There were slave laborers used, for the most part from the Auschwitz concentration camp to concentration camp Neuengamme deported Jews. In 1944 a satellite camp was set up in Horneburg . Forced laborers were also employed in the Hamburg main plant. 140 of them died in a bomb attack on June 18, 1944 because they were denied access to the bunkers.
The actual expansion to Valvo GmbH, an organization that owned four large production facilities in Germany in 1974 and, together with the products of the other Philips factories, sold almost all electronic and electromechanical components of the time, began after the war. The Lokstedt plant survived the bombing almost completely unscathed and was able to resume tube production, which had been suspended for 4 years, in the summer of 1945. Driven by the rapid development in radio and television technology, not only the tubes were further developed. Valvo was a world leader in the development of television picture tubes until the 1980s. As early as 1953, six years after the invention of the transistor , Valvo developed the first industrial transistors for amplifier output stages, which were then delivered in 1957. In 1966 the first integrated circuits from Valvo production came onto the market and at the beginning of the 1970s Valvo was one of the driving forces behind the development of new components for automatic assembly.
In parallel with the new components, Valvo produced technical documentation for these new components. Well known and especially popular with developers and hobbyists were the Valvo paperbacks , handy books in DIN A6 format , which contained, among other things, the operating data and socket assignments of most common tube types.
In 1974, in the year of the company's 50th anniversary, Valvo's product range comprised around 30,000 individual electronic and electromechanical types, employed 8,000 people in Germany, 5,000 of them in Hamburg, had sales of over DM 1 billion with a market share of 21% , making it the largest component supplier in the Federal Republic of Germany.
The decline of the European construction element industry, and with it that of Valvo, began in the 1980s with the strengthening of the industry in Japan. Production facilities that had become unprofitable were sold or closed by the parent company Philips. It started with the electromechanical components that were sold in 1988. Further restructuring measures were prepared by Philips on a long-term basis: In 1989 Valvo GmbH was renamed Philips Bauelemente GmbH; the trade name Valvo initially remained. In 1992, the remaining components were divided into two areas: the passive components and the picture tubes in Philips Components , the active components in Philips Semiconductors . With this step, the trade name Valvo also disappeared from the market for good.
In 1999 Philips Components was sold, the ceramic components were taken over by Yageo and still operate under the name Phycomp on the market today . The electrolytic capacitors , plastic film capacitors and the non-linear resistors were merged with the Beyschlag company from Heide, also a former Philips company, and the American Centralab and were initially taken over independently under the name BCcomponents , then after three years of independence in 2002 by Vishay . This year, Philips brought the picture tube activities into a joint venture with the Korean LG Group , so that the original Valvo core area, the tubes, was no longer 100% owned by the Philips division. In 2006, the former Valvo semiconductor activities were also spun off from Philips and now continue to operate in Hamburg under the name NXP . The entire former area of the Valvo building elements was thus dissolved.
In 1999, the special area of Valvo high-frequency circulators and isolators was released into independence. Shortly afterwards, the new company bought the trade name Valvo Bauelemente GmbH, which was no longer used by Philips, and continues to sell its products on the market under the name Valvo.
swell
- E. Schaaff, W. Sparbier: 40 years of VALVO receiver tubes , special issue of the Valvo reports, April 1964
- In tune with the times , anniversary publication on the occasion of the company's 50th anniversary, Hamburg 1974
Web links
- History of Valvo in the Radio Museum
- Valvo tubes from Hamburg: Broadcasting industry in the media metropolis, Philipp Seuferling, May 2014 [1]
- NXP: 85 years of high tech from Hamburg - from radio tube to microchip [2]
Individual evidence
- ↑ Otto Studemund: 25 years of Valvo tubes. In: "Das Radio-Magazin", issue 8/1949, p. 211 ff.
- ^ Jürgen Bohmbach: The concentration camp satellite camp in Horneburg . In: Heike Schlichting, Jürgen Bohmbach : Everyday life and persecution - The Stade district in the time of National Socialism , publications from the Stade City Archives, Volume 23, Stade 2003, ISBN 3-9806197-7-X , pp. 51–52
- ^ Gertrud Meyer: Night over Hamburg: Reports and Documents 1933-1945. Hamburg, Röderberg-Verlag 1971, p. 161.
- ↑ Otto Studemund: 25 years of Valvo tubes. In: "Das Radio-Magazin", issue 8/1949, p. 211 ff.
- ↑ www.valvo.com