Originally Posted By: Win
I think it's all the same company, Bendix made a lot of different things.
Bendix Red Bank tubes were probably the best vacuum tubes made and were made in New Jersey. Almost all of the Red Banks were very specialized industrial / military tubes with unique pin outs and weren't made for the plain vanilla old consumer broadcast radios pictured in this thread. Some very early ones are branded Eclipse-Pioneer. Ordinary consumer grade Bendix labelled receiving tubes could have been made by anyone.
Tung Sol tubes were, I think, made only in New Jersey. That brand is now used on tubes imported from Russia.
Did RCA have more than one factory for receiving tube production? A guy named Ludwell Sibley wrote a book called Tube Lore that might have some scholarly information on who made what and where and when. Another one is Saga of the Vacuum Tube by Gerald Tyne. I don't own either of these books.
All the RCA manufactured tubes I've seen are only marked with the type number, date code, and country of origin. I suppose there is an outside chance that on the JAN tubes, the contract number ( which is on the tube carton ) could cross reference back to the actual factory that produced the tubes for that contract, assuming those contract records even exist today.
Tubes were a commodity item made by the bazillions - just because it's an RCA box and the tube is labelled RCA doesn't mean it was made by RCA. The major manufacturers would often buy product from each other and put their trade dress on. After you've seen enough of them, it's really easy to tell who made what, regardless of the trade dress. I've never seen an RCA manufactured tube with a date code later than 1976, so probably anything with RCA trade dress after about that date was made by someone else.
Great stuff, thanks. I had just read a long time ago that RCA had a big tube factory in Harrison, NJ. That's why I asked about that specifically.
My interest is really primarily in a radio thatmight have been built at the old victrola factory in camden after RCA bought them.
