Welcome to the OSRAM GEC PHOTO ARCHIVE info page

Here is an aerial photo from the Google Earth website. You can easily make out the positions of the recently demolished buildings. A lot more building has gone on since this image was taken in 2000. All of the Hirst Research Laboratories site is now covered with housing. If you click on a link you can see a relevant view! Click here to compare this image with similar views.                                                            

See below for a key.

1 Hirst Hall
2 Factory Entrance
3 Lampworks Loading Bay
4 Factory Engineers
5 No7 Engine Room
6 No10 Engine Room
7 No10 Boiler house
8 Lifetest (formerly the Oxide Block)
9 No10 Lift
10 No7 Lift
11 Building 58 "Streetlighting"
12 The Storage Depot (Cosely Buildings)
13 Depot loading bay
14 Transport engineers
15 Building 56 Training, Production engineering and GEC Marconi.
16 No 9 Boiler house and estate engineers
17 Peter Tillings Plastics
18 Squash Courts
19 Tennis Courts
20 The site of the GEC Sports and Social Club
21 Hirst Research Centre
22 East Lane
   
   

 

 

 

A brief summary of Osram history by Ken Forman...

 

In the early 1900's, GEC was making electric lamps, particularly carbon lamps, under the Robinson brand name.
The German company, Siemens, joined forces with GEC to make metal filament lamps in the UK, under the brand name Osram which was the name Siemens used in Germany.
At the outbreak of the first world war all German assets were seized by the Government and the Public Trustee sold the Siemens part of Osram to GEC at a knock down price. This new company produced vast profits for GEC until the second world war after which the profitability of lamp making began a sharp decline.
In 1985 the German company, Osram GmbH, acquired a 50% share in Osram(GEC). Within five years this became a complete takeover and Osram(GEC) was history.
The three lamp manufacturing factories, Team Valley, Wembley and Shaw were closed down in turn over the next ten years and now all Osram lamps sold in the UK are imported.
Prior to the takeover, Osram GmbH sold lamps under the brand name Wotan in the UK and Commonwealth, where the Osram trademark was registered to GEC.

Where does the name OSRAM originate - Ken Forman...

In the very early days of lamp development, alternatives to Carbon as a filament material were being sought. One metal tried for a while was Osmium.
Then a method of manufacture was found of using Tungsten, which is still used to-day, although in a different form. The various lamp manufacturing companies had their own trade marks and Siemens in Germany came up with a trademark that identified their product with the much more efficient metal filament lamps i.e. Osram. -

Os for Osmium and ram for Tungsten; except the German for Tungsram is Wolfram - ram.

Thanks to Ken for the above info...

If you have anything that you would like to add to this page or the rest of the site then please get in touch

Tim.