AT their height, the Mullard TV tube and glass factories at Simonstone employed more than 3,000 people – but when design draughtsman Ken Brooks went to work there, you could count the employees on your fingers!

East Lancashire-born Ken, now in his 80s and living in America, has sent Looking Back his memories of starting work for the new facility, back in 1953.

He was one of four draughtsmen who were the first people to be hired – and remembers another as Arthur Dean, from Lucas, in Burnley.

Management at the time were Mr Van Dyck, the managing director; Mr Korndorffer, plant manager; E Kemp, chief engineer; W Betney, production manager; and George Taylor, the chief draughtsman.

With the new plant not even built, their temporary home was on the second floor of an old spinning mill, in Lune Street, Padiham, where fluorescent lights had been strung over five or six drawing boards.

One of their first tasks was to come up with ways to automate as many of the operations in the new plant as possible, so they designed conveyors that transported the tubes from department to department.

Said Ken: “This was long before computers, so there was a lot of inventive mechanical design involved.

“It was very challenging, but enjoyable.”

He went on: “That first winter was tough.

“There was little, or no heat.

“Some days I held a pencil in gloved hands, and kept my overcoat on. There was no canteen, so we had lunch in Padiham, either at a sit-in chip shop, halfway up the hill on the left, a second-storey restaurant opposite, or at ‘Pea Bob’s’, a wooden hut, perched on the railway embankment, near the bridge in Green Lane.

“For the first few months, travelling to Padiham, there were just large, open fields where the new plant would be located.

“I saw the first day of earth moving, and then watched daily as the new plant took shape.”

Gradually, machinists and fitters, office staff and scores of women to build the cathode ray guns were hired, including Ken’s girlfriend, Jeanne Hodkinson, who went to work for Bill Betney, in production control.

Said Ken: “Almost none of the new operators had been involved in TV tube manufacture before, so there was a period of extensive training, complicated by the fact that Mullard had never made TV tubes in this manner before.”

As with many big manufacturing works at the time, it was decided to start up a sports club and a suitable building was found off Padiham Road, Burnley.

In 1955, Stan Haworth, who also worked in the drawing office, bought two snooker tables in an auction for the princely sum of £12.

Back at the plant, work continued to increase. Television sales were booming, as was the technology.

Ken continued: “The Simonstone plant, at that time, was the most automated and efficient TV tube plant in Europe, possibly in the world, producing over half-a- million tubes a year.”

It continued to grow and a glass factory was added. When colour TV arrived in the 1960s, Simonstone led the way, becoming, in 1963, the first factory outside America to make a shadow mask and, a year later, the first in the country to make a colour tube.

By 1968, production had grown to more than a million tubes a year, but the days of flat panel displays were on the horizon, and the days of cathode ray tube TVs and computer monitors were coming to an end. The Simonstone factory closed by 2004.

Said Ken: “Less than 60 years ago, the TV tubes we were making were leading edge technology. If someone had told me that, in my lifetime, I would see it replaced by huge LCD televisions that are one inch thick, and weigh 20 pounds, I would have thought they were crazy. It’s called progress.”