British Valve Association
Encyclopedia
The British Valve Association (BVA) was a cartel
of valve
manufacturers in the United Kingdom
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) that was designed to protect their interests from foreign competition. This cartel dictated (among other things), the price of valves (tubes) and how they were numbered (supposedly designed to make it difficult to identify American equivalents, which were typically half the price [retail] in the United States of America [USA]); however USA types manufactured in the UK by companies such as Brimar sold at the same price as their UK counterparts due to the BVA's insistence. All manufactures eventually published their own lists of 'equivalents' between their own valves and those of other manufacturers including American types, so cross-referencing became easy, in the UK at least.
The BVA dictated that no more than one electrode structure could be contained within one envelope. This latter point was because the BVA levied a charge of initially £1 per valveholder, to cover royalties on any of its members' patent rights. Pressure from set makers for multi-structure valves to overcome the BVA's edict led to British and European manufacturers introducing many multi-structure valves and these eventually became the norm.
The British radio set makers were now able to adopt multi-structure valve designs. One German manufacturer produced a multi-structure valve that contained not only all the electrode structures for a complete radio receiver, but many of the passive components as well.
Cartel
A cartel is a formal agreement among competing firms. It is a formal organization of producers and manufacturers that agree to fix prices, marketing, and production. Cartels usually occur in an oligopolistic industry, where there is a small number of sellers and usually involve homogeneous products...
of valve
Vacuum tube
In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube , or thermionic valve , reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum...
manufacturers in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK) that was designed to protect their interests from foreign competition. This cartel dictated (among other things), the price of valves (tubes) and how they were numbered (supposedly designed to make it difficult to identify American equivalents, which were typically half the price [retail] in the United States of America [USA]); however USA types manufactured in the UK by companies such as Brimar sold at the same price as their UK counterparts due to the BVA's insistence. All manufactures eventually published their own lists of 'equivalents' between their own valves and those of other manufacturers including American types, so cross-referencing became easy, in the UK at least.
The BVA dictated that no more than one electrode structure could be contained within one envelope. This latter point was because the BVA levied a charge of initially £1 per valveholder, to cover royalties on any of its members' patent rights. Pressure from set makers for multi-structure valves to overcome the BVA's edict led to British and European manufacturers introducing many multi-structure valves and these eventually became the norm.
The British radio set makers were now able to adopt multi-structure valve designs. One German manufacturer produced a multi-structure valve that contained not only all the electrode structures for a complete radio receiver, but many of the passive components as well.