A Few Marconi Keys.
Marconi 365 EZ.
The Marconi 365EZ and Marconi's purchase of Eddystone Radio. By Ron Stringer.
"Marconi's had been shareholders for many years, but Eddystone Radio was wholly taken over by the Marconi Company (which itself was owned by the English Electric Company) in 1965.
The reason for the Eddystone name appearing inside the cover of the MIMCo 365EZ key (and probably inside the cover of its replacement, the Z50- etc) was that the brass cover of the earlier 365 series of keys was hand made and outrageously expensive to manufacture.
It only served to keep muck and foreign bodies out of the key, and to keep rfi inside the box, so it had to be replaced as a cost-cutting action.
Eddystone Radio had a sideline in making diecast aluminium boxes in standard sizes for use by amateurs and makers of machinery controls. (This was an offshoot of the way that Eddystone built the sensitive parts of their radio receivers as an assembly of screened diecast boxes, rather than by the more common method of bending and soldering compartments into a chassis made of tinplate.
Having invested in the dies, they maximised the return by selling the boxes to distributors of electronic components such
as STC Components, Radio Spares and Maplin).
So at Marconi we designed out the very expensive brass cover and replaced it with a standard, diecast, Eddystone box.
The Z50- was designed some time in the 1980s when Marconi Marine (MIMCo) moved its drawing office nomenclature from the general one used by its parent, MWT, to one that was specific to MIMCo. All our drawings began with Z and the sequence Z50- was used not for major products but for ancillaries such as morse keys, battery chargers, antenna switching units and so on". Ron Stringer.
MARCONI KEY TYPE 316A.
MARCONI KEY TYPE 971
Marconi Z50.
Redifon A4084.
Marconi 365A.