Yes thanks Brad for your detective work and location pictures.

Quite by coincidence, I just did work for a family whose son does sketches and paintings of old urban landmarks that strike his fancy. Seems he likes exploring same places I do, though I wasn't aware of old Cutler-Hammer factory he painted (his photo-realistic detail even includes faded painted signage on wall)(which I just noticed!)(hard to see)

Here is painting:

http://s1273.photobucket.com/user/NewVista1/media/8dc2f65d-c819-484f-aa0d-968df234db4e_zps027e0837.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0.

Here is the Airzone Radio Factory at 16-22 Australia Street, Camperdown, NSW. Sydneysiders may well remember the old Bailey & McBride furniture showrooms advertised by a Scotsman wearing a kilt back in the 1970s and 1980s - this is just up the road a bit from here.

I am not sure what the brick building to the right was used for. Is there a member who knows of a Camperdown/Newtown/Macdonaldtown resident that can let us know?

The Airzone building appears to be converted to flats.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Here is the former site of the Breville factory and head office at 67 Missenden Road, Camperdown. The block has been consumed by Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) Hospital and the University of Sydney for a research centre of some sort. Unfortunately, in the case of Breville and AWA, we've been beaten to the draw by the developer's D9s. The building in the background is the former King George V Memorial Hospital which is now housed in a new building elsewhere on the RPA site.

The next picture shows the original site of RCS Radio, just around the corner from AWA's first Radio Electric Works site. RCS was at 12 City Road, Darlington.



An earlier photo showed the building that Philips once made its valves in. The following photo shows where the rest of the radio was made. This is 10 Dowling Street, Woolloomooloo, NSW - right opposite Garden Island Dockyard, home to the Royal Australian Navy.



So where are all these manufacturers now?

AWA survives as an IT company. Their core business is installing computer networks and rolling out computer equipment in office buildings and the like. Like the AWA of old, there is an offshoot once called Telefix, which provides warranty servicing for most of the major television and computer manufacturers. AWA remains Australian owned despite its huge former empire being split up and sold off to foreign players.

Philips is still in business as an appliance and lamp manufacturer and was probably the largest radio manufacturer in the world in terms of market footprint.

Breville started out as a radio manufacturer and survived the demise of local radio manufacturing by inventing and manufacturing kitchen appliances. Today all Breville products are imported but are still designed in Australia and the company remains Australian-owned. Most owners of Breville products would be hard pressed to know of the company's origins.

Airzone is long gone. It started out as an independent company but was swallowed by EMMCO, which in turn became the mighty EMAIL whose core business was the manufacture of watt-hour meters. Email participated in many areas of design and manufacture in the domestic, commercial and industrial sectors. Household whitegoods, air conditioners, electrical metering, circuit breakers, switchboards and of course, radios. Email's brands included Email, EmailAir, Airzone, Westinghouse, Kelvinator, Malleys, Simpson, Frigidaire and in its last few years of operation also included brands previously owned by Southcorp such as Hoover, Rheem, Vulcan, Chef and Dishlex. Most of the appliance that carry the brands above are now produced by Electrolux which only has one factory left in Australia and this is earmarked for closure in the next year or two.

Kriesler was taken over by Philips and the brand retired in the early 1980s.

STC was taken over by Alcatel, a manufacturer of business phones. Whilst Alcatel did take over STC's contract to supply Telstra with rental telephones, no local manufacturing is still carried out that I am aware of.

HMV ceased manufacture of radio and television soon after colour transmissions started. After this HMV-branded televisions were brought in from Japan. The HMV factory was used to press LP records up until these were phased out by the introduction of the Compact Disc. EMI pressed CDs in the separate factory in nearby Silverwater for a short time. The HMV brand reappeared in the 1990s when they opened a chain of music stores. HMV Music was merged with Virgin Music and Sanity Music and most stores in the group closed down. Most of the group's sales now occur online.

I almost forgot to mention RCS Radio. RCS survives today as one of Australia's largest manufacturers of complete printed circuit boards, making the boards for all magazine kits and boards for other customers as well. If you want a circuit board for a kit described even 30 years ago and even by one of the several defunct electronics magazines, RCS will either have it in stock or would be able to make it up for you.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Email Co. is strange coincidence to modern word. Like Rockola Jukebox which sounds like a made up word "Rock" + "RadiOLA" but David Rockola made jukeboxes before "Rock n Roll" made them even more popular.

Present appliance dealer signage on RCS Bldg has big spelling blooper and next door has 100 yr-old rusting tin roof (as long as it doesn't leak)

As well as TVs in UK & Aust, STC's (hidden) parent Co, ITT, owned short lived (early 50s)TV brand in the US: 'Farnsworth' (named after television pioneer). I had one of these, rare, very deluxe with cabinet doors, round tube masked rectangular, sold it to Canadian collector, wish I still had it.

We've probably reached a stage where the word Email will simply mean electronic mail and nothing else. Even on an Internet search there's few references to one of the largest manufacturing conglomerates Australia possessed.

For those who are not aware, EMAIL is an acronym standing for Electrical Metering and Allied Industries Limited. For the last few years of its life it was owned by Bayard Capital and went back to its core activity of making watt-hour meters. During that time they took over European metering company, Landis & Gyr, in a show of the force that Email once possessed. However proving that venture capitalists never stay still for long, the business was taken over a few years ago by Toshiba.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

I also forgot to mention RCS Radio in my comments about the survivors - a paragraph has been added above.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Present appliance dealer signage on RCS Bldg has big spelling blooper...

Yeah. The bloke pictured out the front owns the shop. He noticed the flash on my camera and when I walked past a few minutes later I spoke with him for a few minutes. His English isn't the best but the conversation went okay. He was quite surprised when I told him his shop used to be a factory for radio parts about 85 years ago.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

RCS survives today as one of Australia's largest manufacturers of complete printed circuit boards, making the boards for all magazine kits and boards for other customers as well.

I think you'll find that it's gone.

Bob Barnes, the old fella who owned and operated it, died suddenly in June 2011. His son had thoughts of carrying on the business, but decided not to. I'm not surprised as his father had an unmatched encyclopedic knowledge of EA and SC kits -- and would tell you what he thought of them in no uncertain terms, too!

Son was trying to sell the whole kit and caboodle a while ago. I don't know what came of that process, but I suspect nobody put their hand up.

AWA retained their trademarks and logos during the big sell off and the AWA televisions and DVD players available through BigW stores are licensed by AWA although they have nothing to do with the design and manufacture.

Son was trying to sell the whole kit and caboodle a while ago. I don't know what came of that process, but I suspect nobody put their hand up.

I do remember RCS being up for sale though there didn't seem to be any news about what the result was. At the time I was watching carefully as I would imagine there aren't many other businesses like that in Australia now and I remember the RCS ads in the classifieds section of Silicon Chip were still running.

One thing I do know is that the RCS website has no content on it, just a template.

If they are gone then I wonder where Jaycar and Silicon Chip get their PC boards from.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

The custom PCB business has largely gone online now. Google "custom PCB" and you'll see lots of options, some local and some overseas. It can be fairly cheap if you send them a set of files, such as Gerber files, from one of the standard circuit CAD tools, which can take you from component connection points to optimised PCB layout.

I have used the free program Kicad for simple design and layout jobs. Unless you are going to make PCBs regularly, it is hardly worth setting yourself up to etch your own PCBs with dangerous chemicals hanging about.

Maven

Yes, been a long time since I made my own boards. Last one was around 1989 and I spilt ferric chloride on my bedroom carpet. No harm done apart from an orange stain which was surprising. I thought it'd eat the carpet right through to the concrete floor.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Anyone heard of Racophone factory in Annandale, Sth Sydney? Made radios and optical film sound equipment there. Very strange given established nature of their products in US (may recall rare 1920s trade magazine Ad for their giant horn speaker I posted)

Anyhow, I have (rare?) dvd film of factory (1935) but am having problem ripping it to mp4 for YouTube using free 'Handbrake' program (keeps saying source must be scanned?)

Annandale is inner west. I will do some digging. From distant memory there were a couple of organisations close by.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

I think there were some radio type workshops next door in Leichhardt. I bought some speaker boxes from a joinery there in 1971.

I lived in Annandale for about 6 months in 1971. There was a small foundry at the end of the street. Next door neighbour worked there. And the trains in the shunting yard used to make a hell of a racket at 3am.