Shri Nathji Radios – PYE & RCA

Shri Nathji had a Radio made by the famous foreign company PYE and he listened to the news and whatever music came on it, frequently. The radio license had to be renewed every year. Shri Nathji used to Punctualy get the renewal  done at Band House, Camel’s Back Road, Mussoorie. Shri Nathji and Mateshwari used to listen to an upright Pye Radio, which they had brought with them from Lahore, and which had dials that rotated in an unusual way. It was their one form of entertainment apart from the films which they went to see. When Lala Hargopal stayed with Shri Nathji at Mussoorie after partition, he used to religiously listen to the PYE radio.There were the times when Lala Hargopal would come into Shri Nathji's bedroom and listen to the PYE radio there, which had a volume so low that he had to cup his ear in his hand and hold it close to the radio. Priya Nath would at times mimic his grandfather and listen to the radio in a likewise manner.

W.G. Pye & Co. Ltd. was founded in 1896 in Cambridge by William George Pye, an employee of the Cavendish Laboratory, as a part time business making scientific instruments. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914 the company employed 40 people manufacturing instruments that were used for teaching and research. The war increased demand for such instruments and the War Office needed experimental thermionic valves. The manufacture of these components afforded the company the technical knowledge that it needed to develop the first wireless receiver when the first UK broadcasts were made by the BBC in 1922. Instruments continued to be designed and manufactured under W G Pye Ltd, later situated in York Street Cambridge, while a separate company was started to build wireless components in a factory at Church Path, Chesterton.

 In 1924, Harold Pye, the son of the founder, and Edward Appleton, his former tutor at St. John's College, designed a new series of receivers which proved even more saleable. In 1928 William Pye sold the company, now renamed Pye Radio Ltd., to C. O. Stanley, who established a chain of small component-manufacturing factories across East Anglia.

The new EF50 valve from Philips enabled Pye to build this high-gain receiver, which was a Tuned Radio Frequency (TRF) type and not a superhet type.

With the outbreak of World War 2, the Pye receiver using EF50 valves became a key component of many radar receivers, forming the 45 MHz Intermediate Amplifier (IF) section of the equipment. Pye went on to design and manufacture radio equipment for the British Army,

In February 1944, Pye formed a specialist division called Pye Telecommunications Ltd which it intended would design and produce radio communications equipment when the war ended. This company developed, prospered and grew to become the leading UK producer of mobile radio equipment for commercial, business, industrial, police and government purposes.

In 1955, the company diversified into music production with Pye Records. The Independent Television Authority (ITA) started public transmissions in the same year so Pye had to produce new television designs that could receive ITV and the availability of a second channel introduced the need for tuners. Pye's VT4 tunable television was launched in March 1954

Pye TVT Ltd was formed to produce broadcast television equipment, including cameras, which were very popular with British broadcasters including the BBC as well as international sales.  Later in the seventies when it faced compition from Japanese companies, the company stopped production. The Pye group of companies was bought outright by Philips in 1976.

When Shri Nathji was in Mumbai, Sukhdev wished to know what he could buy for Shri Nathji before he left the city of Bombay. And Shri Nathji recollected that he needed a radio to listen to the news about the world in the isolated atmosphere of Mussoorie. The PYE radio which he had with him at Mussoorie had a sound so low that Shri Nathji had to strain his ears and even cup them close to the radio to catch the words.

Sukhdev immediately went to the market and purchased a small RCA radio, which had a volume so loud that it rocked the entire building! It was the very antithesis of the first radio. Shri Nathji laughed as he listened to its blast. However here was a gift that would remind him of Sukhdev every time he looked at it or listened to it in the silence of the Himalayas at Mussoorie.

RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. It was founded after world war one, when the control of the Radio was given back into private hands from the military.  In 1929, RCA purchased the Victor Talking Machine Company, then the world's largest manufacturer of phonographs. The company made many models  of Radios and phonographs.

RCA was involved in radar and radio development in support of the war effort. This greatly assisted RCA in its television research. RCA become a popular manufacturer of televisions During WWII and beyond, RCA set up several new divisions, for defense, space exploration and other activities. Later the company also diversified into  computers.

RCA antique radios and RCA Merrill/CT-100s and other early color television receivers are among the more sought-after collectible radios and televisions, thanks to their popularity during the golden age of radio, their manufacturing quality, their engineering innovations, their styling and their name, RCA.