In December's edition of Silicon Chip I read a letter to the editor showing the date for the 100th anniversary of Amalgamated Wireless Australiasia (AWA).

According to the AWA Veterans Association, the specific date will be the 28th July, 2013.

For those that are unaware, AWA still survives today in this world of globalisation and consolidation and is a profitable enterprise. That said, the once-mighty dominator of the Australian electronics industry has reduced a little in size and market power and operates as a business services company. See http://awa.com.au/ for more details.

In its heyday, AWA participated in just about every facet of electronic entertainment. They designed and manufactured valve and transistorised equipment in just about every segment of the consumer and commercial market. Radios, record and tape players, televisions, radio and television transmission equipment, mobile telephones (not the type we use today), police and taxi radios, police and military radar equipment, desktop and wall-mounted telephones, naval weapon systems, traffic signals, automated totalisator machines, lottery ticket machines, radio and television station studio equipment and the all-important manufacture of electronic components; thermionic valves, transistors, integrated circuits, condensers, resistors, diodes, transformers, dials, loudspeakers and mounting hardware.

Those close to AWA or native to Sydney will also know about the AWA Building at 47 York Street, once AWA's head office and Sydney's tallest office building between 1939 and 1962 when it was overtaken by the AMP Building in 33 Alfred Street.

It would be fitting for us to celebrate this anniversary this year in some way as there'd be few of us who wouldn't have one of AWA's vast array of products in our collections. I would suggest that before the 28th July we assemble a page on this site with photographs of displays of our AWA receivers (and other AWA items and memorabilia). If anyone has any other suggestions feel free to post them in this thread.

Lets not forget Sir Ernest Fisk, the man who made AWA the great organisation it was. There is a biography of his life & times in a Electronics Australia publication called "Australia's Radio Pioneers". Here is a brief extract from this article:

Ernest Fisk was born in 1886, near London. He joined the Marconi Company in 1906 and trained as an Wireless Operator aboard ships travelling across the Atlantic. In 1910 he was assigned to the Orient Line, which made several trips to Australia. In 1911 he settled in Australia as a representative of the Marconi Company and set up an office in Sydney. At this time the only wireless communication was between coastal stations and shipping. In 1913 Ernest Fisk helped to set up a new Australian company "to acquire the rights to the patents, technical information, results of scientific research and the business of the world's leading wireless systems, and to develop them in Australia & NZ." With the initial support of Marconi, Telefunken & the Australian government the company Amalgamated Wireless Australasia Ltd was formed with Fisk as its General Manager. In 1916 Ernest Fisk was appointed Managing Director. Ernest Fisk, knighted in 1937 and remained Managing Director until 1944. In 1944 Sir Ernest Fisk moved back to England and was for a time Managing Director for EMI. Sir Ernest Fisk returned to Australia to live out his retirement and died 1965 in Sydney, aged 78.

I think AWA remember Sir Ernest too - their URL redirects to a subdomain which appears to be named in his honour.

AWA was an extraordinary company. I've searched in vain for a book on its history. It's time for a definitive history of it to be professionally written while those who worked for it are still with us.

AWA's beginnings were covered to a great extent in Radio Broadcasting technology (John F Ross AM), which was a limited edition publication released in 1998.

One thing I would like to see is some footage of the AWA Radio-Electric Works in action. Elsewhere on this site there are links to some Youtube footage of the British Mullard valve factory and it shows the making of valves in fairly good detail. Was such activity filmed at AWA? If so, is any of the film still around? Should I contact the National Film and Sound Archive?

I agree that we should try and obtain information from those who worked for the company. Not many others would be in a position to give accurate information to the extent worthy of this occasion.

Hi all.
I looked at the AWA website and there is a link to a 1940's cinema ad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=no81sVUNXiQ.
There would have to be some films, newsreels or even war time propaganda relating to AWA out there.
Cheers.

You've got me doing it now....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VHAzaqgkw8.

And...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vW6eUOe4iI.

And...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89pNkNIAcI4.

A bit of wow and flutter in the third one but all three very interesting.

There's a lot of scattered history of AWA technical activity, because it was active in so many fields.

There have also been some business case studies of how the once-mighty corporation was brought to bankruptcy in later years by classic management mistakes - trying to do too much, borrowing too much, missing radical changes in the market.

I'm not aware of any thorough corporate history, including the human detail from insiders, of the kind that Geoffrey Blainey has written for several Australian mining corporations in the past. I seem to remember that somebody tried to do it in the 1990s but AWA management would not cooperate. Nothing in the National Library catalogue, though.

Maven

...trying to do too much, borrowing too much, missing radical changes in the market.

Not to mention a situation that years later also plagued the National Australia Bank where one or more of AWA's then financial staff invested lots of AWA's money on overnight markets and pretty much lead to the brink of bankruptcy previously mentioned.

I'd not be too surprised if this matter was the primary cause for AWA selling off most of its divisions in the 1990s in order to rebalance the books.

That's right - it was the period when all the smart young MBAs were so certain that engineering was rubbish, but certain that bogus financial engineering was the way to go. Still some of those around, busily destroying once-productive businesses.

Maven

I will be travelling this coming weekend. I want to grab some photos of AWA's real estate outside NSW and know of two sites in Victoria worth grabbing. Does anyone know if AWA had offices or factories outside NSW and VIC?

Brad.
Do you know about Fiskville?
Fiskville is just out of Ballan on a road that heads towards Geelong. Fiskville was the site of the Beam Wireless transmitter, built around 1927. The site, which should be preserved by the National Trust, is a collection of classic 1920's style buildings and houses. It is now occupied by the CFA (Country Fire Authority) and is used as a fire fighting training facility. Fiskville has been recently subject to controversy regarding toxic substances used in fire fighting training.
Cheers.

Yes, I read about that place this morning and it is one of the places I want to photograph.

It's a shame that many of AWA's properties no longer exist. Their original factory and head office is now the site of the Kent Telephone Exchange in Sydney and I saw earlier that the Melbourne office at 167 Queen Street is now a much more modern building.

I'm going to try and trace some of the places that Sir Ernest Fisk did some of his experiments. AWA had some small buildings they were using in Pennant Hills in Sydney's north during the early days. Some of Neville Williams' articles in EA may shed some light on others too.

Places that still exist are the original Radio-Electric Works in Knox Street, Chippendale; head office at 47 York Street, Sydney and the factory where televisions were made on Victoria Road at Rydalmere. All these buildings have other uses these days of course. The Radio-Electric Works is now a block of flats. 47 York Street has a myriad of owners and tenants and the Rydalmere factory is now a distribution warehouse for Mistubishi Electric.

If someone could shed some light on what the address was for Australian Totalisators at Meadowbank I'd be able to confirm whether or not that factory still exists. There were quite a lot of factories in this area including Hoover Appliances and Wisdom Toothbrushes though most of these have been razed and blocks of flats built in their place.

If someone could shed some light on what the address was for Australian Totalisators at Meadowbank

37-53 Nancarrow Ave, and according to Google Street View as of 2009 the beautiful art deco factory building was still there.

I hope there's a heritage listing on it. Too much original industrial architecture has been bulldozed in Sydney.

Here it's shown when new:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~bconlon/factory.jpg

Haha, Funny thing is, I've been so close to that building many times. Backing off that is Salmon Bros. Electrical Wholesalers on Constitution Road.

In the aerial photos I can see the Hoover factory is still there too. It'll be interesting to head down there and find out who occupies all those places now.