Part 3 - 1964 to 1978

The Philips Take-over

In the early 1960s the market for TV sets became very competitive and despite falling sales the Pye answer was to increase production quantites to drive down costs.  A merger with EKCO was agreed without much due diligence, resulting in an even greater stock of unsold TV sets.  Pye also subsidised various TV rental companies resulting in losses for several years.

In early 1964 a number of Pye Group Directors who had become discontented with the state of the Pye Groups' finances, called in a firm of consulting accountants who soon produced a critical report about how the group was run. The Chairman, C.O. Stanley (now 67), resigned.  Within one week of the very turbulent Annual General meeting held in November 1966, Philips and Thorn made bids for the Pye Group of companies.  Philips, however, had previously been quietly buying Pye shares and soon acquired first, a 24% and then a 60% shareholding and later, an 85% shareholding, and finally took control of Pye in early 1967.  Shortly after, Brinkley resigned from PTL, of which he was by then Chairman and Managing Director, and joined Standard Telephones and Cables (STC), which was part of  ITT.

Scientific Management

On the 1st April 1968, Dr. John Westhead  was appointed Managing Director of PTL and brought a new style of scientific management and control into PTL, which at that time had a headcount of 3178.  Westhead, who came from A.E.I., and was not previously connected with mobile radio, tightened up many of the fairly relaxed management procedures and introduced more formality into the decision making process, including in the areas of product development, marketing and sales.
 
Some said however, that the successful entrepreneurial atmosphere which had prevailed in the Stanley and Brinkley days virtually disappeared overnight.  Nevertheless, the Company continued to be staffed largely by radio enthusiasts and continued to make good progress in all its chosen activities.
 
Pye Products in Space

In 1967 the Space Laboratory of Pye led by Don Weighton designed the special scanning receiver, which was carried on the UK Aerial III satellite. Its purpose was to explore the spectrum of galactic noise in the band from 2.0 to 4.5MHz where terrestrial observation is not normally feasible.  By January 1969, equipment designed and made by the same group was orbiting the earth in eight different satellites, ranging from Aerial III and UK-1 to ESRO-2.  Some of the experiments still functioned in the early 1990s, which says a lot for the design and build quality of these products, and for the skills and abilities of the people involved.
 
The Westminster

In the field of PMR the W15AM/W15FM Pye Westminster mobile equipment was introduced in 1967.  This was the first solid state PMR TX/RX. A very large range of AM and FM products, with a great choice of frequency bands, power outputs and different mounting arrangements was introduced over the next few months.  This was a very well designed and reliable piece of equipment, which offered good value for money and was well liked in the market place.  Many units were still in use by customers well into the 1990s, and the Westminster is still a well-respected classic design of the discrete component era.
 
Growing Pains

Pye Telecom had long outgrown the Ditton Works, Newmarket Road site, had completely taken over the old Pye Radio Works factory (now called Cambridge Works) at St. Andrews Road, built a new factory in nearby Haverhill and also had departments and laboratories scattered all around the City of Cambridge. The AM mobile lab was located at Banhams Marina, as was also the Publications Dept. and the handbook store.  The FM mobile lab was located at Gloucester Street, as was the Service Dept. Headquarters.  The Spares department was located at Gwydir Street.  What was needed was one large industrial complex into which the whole operation could be amalgamated for maximum efficiency.

Site1 - The New Building Complex

In August 1970, Cambridge City Council gave formal planning approval for the construction of a major new Pye Telecom building complex of 19,000 square metres floor area, to be built on land owned by the Company on the south side of St. Andrew's Road, Cambridge.  This area included the site of the original Pye Telecom building of 1947.

By March 1975 Philips gave financial approval for the new building which was budgeted at £5,000,000.  In August 1975 site work commenced and the building complex was completed in early 1978 and in May of that year was formally opened by Lord Thorneycroft (a distinguished parliamentarian and Minister, at the time the chairman of Pye Limited).  The opening ceremony was nearly ruined because three days of torrential rain had caused the river Cam to overflow on to land behind the site to a depth of several feet.

As there was no longer a need for the various other Pye sites around Cambridge City, the departments they housed were gradually moved to the new site (called Site1).  Most of the original 1920s - 1930s Haig Road, Pye Radio Works factory was demolished for use as a car park.

New Products

New ranges of equipment continued to be introduced.  The 1972 catalogue showed 22 mobiles, 21 portables, 20 fixed stations, 10 radio link equipments, 23 major systems elements and 16 antennas which were listed as current production items.

Amongst these items were: the SSB1000T 1kW H.F. SSB transmitter, the SSB130 HF mobile, a new range of dash mounted mobiles - the MF5/MF25 Europa range and the new Mascot 50/70/200 Operator Control System.  The Mascot family was the first equipment to employ electronic switching of speech circuits and electronic logic circuits for all control functions.

As of mid 1972, PTL had 33 Installation, Commissioning and Maintenance centres in the U.K. and had appointed qualified agents in 113 countries overseas.

In 1974 the M200 Olympic series of modular VHF/UHF mobile radiotelephones was introduced followed in 1978 by the M252 Pegasus mobile, designed for the MOD UK home defence radio network called Project Mould.  The M256 Beaver followed as a commercial version of the M252 Pegasus in 1976 and a new Reporter MF6AM in 1977.  The overall volume of this new Reporter being 1/10th that of the original valve set of the early 1950s, yet the transmitter output power was doubled.

The determined effort to reduce channel bandwidth requirements, which started in the earliest days of PTL, continued and in 1978 PTL reported on the successful conclusion of a project which included the design and manufacture of VHF AM and FM mobile transceivers using channel spacing of only 6.25kHz.

Following the 100 Watt mobile the PMR2, the 50 Watt M206 was launched in 1978 to compete with specific Motorola products (the Micor and Mitrek) in the Canadian and South East Asian markets etc.  The M206 had the highest performance receiver ever produced by Pye Telecom, giving 100dB adjacent channel selectivity and 80dB intermodulation, with good production margins.  It utilised the chassis mechanics and heat sink of the duplex Olympic M204 and M214 equipment, when that product development was canceled and priority of development switched from the European CEPT duplex market to the international high power, high specification commercial PMR market on the guidance of Ron Grove.

In 1978/9, UK Home Office sponsored trials took place of an SSB mobile radio system with channel spacing of only 5kHz. The equipment were based on the PTL M206X, which was the Company's first frequency synthesised product.  The M206X was an advanced development project to pilot the use of the new Mullard synthesiser integrated circuits and was based on the new M206 crystal controlled remote mount mobile technology platform.