Will this be a leaky one?

[Steve D.]

Originally Posted by Phil Nelson

From my experience in the magazine business, magazine covers and publicity photos are always staged, sometimes with ridiculous (from a technical standpoint) results. They are created by art directors, not engineers.

The artful lighting in this one suggests they did not just walk up to an active production station with a camera. More likely, they pulled a junk tube out a bin and staged the whole scene with dramatic lighting to maximize the visual impact. For all we know, the guy in the welder's hood is a janitor or assistant layout artist, whose time was less valuable than an engineer's.

Great photo, in any case. That's a 15GP22 tube, right?

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Phil,

The date on the publicity notice is Nov. 1953. This tube may have been an early 15GP22 or more likely an RCA developmental C-73599 tri-color tube.

-Steve D.