Thoughts on 800B Production

[Joseph W Strickland]

I looked at the three Serial Number sequences that are represented in my 800B units. My first unit is SN 1035 and my second is SN 1123 with the last being SN 6182. The date ranges from SN 1035 (April 1, 1946) to SN 6182 (January 15, 1947). I looked at 1946 and 1947 calendars and subtracted out all holidays that were recognized from the 5-day workweek which worked out to about 197 workdays. That works out to roughly 25 to 26 chassis being completed per workday. The Scott Radio Laboratories may not have recognized every holiday shown on the calendars I looked at. Some holidays were normally only observed by banks and a few organizations but were not universal to all businesses. Also some businesses worked on Saturdays, so my estimate could be off some.

It would be interesting to know how many employees worked for Scott Radio Laboratories in 1946 and 1947 to produce that number of chassis per day.

Joe

[Joseph W Strickland]

My latest 800B acquisition is SN 1123 produced on April 11, 1946. That represents 9 working days from SN 1035 and at least 88 units of production. That represents about 10 units per day for 9 work days. It may be that production was slower in the beginning and then increased as production continued.

Joe

[Norman S Braithwaite]

A plot of serial numbers vs dates over the entire production run indicates slower production around August and September of 1946 then again around May through July of 1947 at which time production ended.  The overall average production throughout the run was very close to 500 units per month or about 115 per week.  If you look to closely, this may be hard to see because there is no certainty that the sets were inspected in the order of their serial numbers.

Norman

[Joseph W Strickland]

Norman;

Do you have any idea why production slowed in August and September? Perhaps slowdown in preparation for the changes that were to be incorporated in the late versions?

Joe

[Norman S Braithwaite]

Sales slow during the summer months. Many people are on vacation. The second period of slow production near the end of the run was probably also affected by conversion of production to the Metropolitan 16A.

Norman

[Joseph W Strickland]

Norman;

That sounds very reasonable - changeover for new model plus summer sales slowdown. Do we know what the total production of the Metropolitan 16A came to?

Joe

[Norman S Braithwaite]

Roughly 2000.

Norman

[Joseph W Strickland]

Norman;

OK thanks for that data on the Metropolitan 16A.

Joe