Motorola 114 Car Radio

[Terry]

When I started work in 1960, we bought Erie 20% resistors in dozens, neatly packed in cardboard packets with cellophane windows, for 4d each - just under 2p, the price you quoted for modern 1% components.

Using the Bank of England's inflation calculator, 4d in 1960 would have been 7s 6½d - ~38p in 2018!

Actually there was an error there, the modern day prices would be 9s 0½d (45½p) - I forgot to add the 20% VAT!

Of course, there was no VAT in 1960 and its predecessor, Purchase Tax was levied on complete receivers, CRTs and valves but not on other individual components.

Valves designated as industrial types were tax exempt which led to the strange anomaly that the EL95, widely used in Grundig tape recorders, was the only tax exempt valve we ever stocked or sold!

PT went up and down like a yo-yo - it was every chancellor's favourite tax knob to twiddle with and hardly a budget went by when it didn't change: 25%, 50%, then back to 25% and back again until one chancellor found a new game to play and the 50% went down to 45% and so it went on.

It wasn't an accumulator tax like VAT, it was levied on the wholesale price and that was that. One of our wholesalers sent us a look-up table which they updated after every budget so it was case of pick up valve and read price: 12s 6d plus PT. Look at table on wall: Price = 12/6 PT=2/1. Add both together and charge customer 14/7.

Oh happy days!