VACUUM TUBE PRODUCTION IN THE USSR

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP80-00810A001100320008-6
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 8
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 23, 2009
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: May 20, 1953
• Content Type: REPORT

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
INFORMATION REPORT
SEC,' E.T
SECURITY INFORMATION
COUNTRY USSR (Moscow Oblast)
SUBJECT
PLACE ACQUIRED
20 MaY1953
This is UNEVALUATED Information]
THE SOURCE EVALUATIONS IN THIS REPORT ARE DEFINITIVE..
THE APPRAISAL OF CONTENT IS TENTATIVE.
(FOR KEY SEE REVERSE)
NO. OF PAGES
REQUIREMENT
REFERENCES
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other fail ,lities iris' doing develop-
ment work; for example , vod ~(the to-+ s,11 od 111,.1,#:kt ro ,Zivodll) in Moscow
is working on the .evelopmmmnt t:f cathode ray tuham from the RCA "preferred
list." However, thmy have r.,L iy a eirtali lsborator`v., and no capacity for de-
-velapment suoh as extete at, NIA 16O.," Although NIl :1,6o has production production facil-
it3ee, its pwirw'y mission is l,eve'lr lvaent rather than mru- 25X1
hotu,ring. the re~rsa ee ,ie t~a~u in other :fa+ilitiee.
JARMY
This Document contains information affecting theNa-
tional Defense of the United States, within the mean-
ing of Title 18, Sections 793 and 794, of the U.S. Code, as
amended. Its transmission or revelation of its contents
to or receipt by an unauthorized person is prohibited
by law. The reproduction of this form is prohibited.
REPORT
Vacuum Tube Product ion in the USSR DATE. DISTR.
Ax
NAVY AIR jx F81
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e
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. research and development on vacuum tubes has resulted in a
product whose quality is on a par with Western vacuum tubes.
Most of the Soviet tube types are exact copies of Western
the present Soviet activity in the fi
l
lems which impair performance. 44
Soviets were having great :d?ffiou ?y in making glass tubes
and metal bulbs for kinescopes, but were fully aware of the
problems and were working on their solutions. Jee:below.,
t types and therefore there are almost no constructional
i 00 ------- '~ -'--- - -- --
the Soviets cannot maintain their rasa-At
o
behind the-West because their capability for y ig
pursuing original
future development is limited.
l.
s ion as far as `vacuum tubas are 'doncerned; t he pw4 11 1 P
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there was 'never a program among an
of the
y
development groups, and certainly not in the
field of cathode
.
.
ray tubes, devoted to making a tube superior to the world
standard. The general program was only to oogy
a multi -ohannel switching tube which is
quite advances, This tube used the. orthicon beam principle
to accomplish 20-.channel switchin and the r not ].e roved
to be simple and reliable.
development laboratories. F/, reasons are the
following:
a@ only the slightest clues that 'any work at all. was
conducted at Tashkent, whereas all other institutor and
facilities were heard from frrw uentl . aooord~
ingly, operations have only recently oommenoed-and
development work, if any, must be correspondingly
small.
W"Wk
tube manufacturing plants at Tashkent and Sartcv do not have
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Tubas in Develon_ t8tawe { n the USJS
7? a list of the tubes under dsvslopmsnl- at l vod
632.
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this list showed that Zavod,
632 was developing the following osoillograph tubes'': 3 DP-1
(using polarized deflection); 3-BP-1 (without polarized de-
flection); a 5" tube..with-post acceleration. In addition
to the above three:
the 5 FP-7 for" PPI'.s was on: it, and tube having a
long gun. the list contained mostly 3r and 5winoh,tubes. It
was general knowledge that.Zavod 632 vas also working on 9"
and '12" PPI tubes having. ground, spherical face plates and.
long persistence, and that it was also working on`a 7".kine-
scope*
steel.cone and employed an electrostatic deflection system.
The.tube had a low focusing voltage and an ion trap, and the
development work, which was being done at Nil 160, -was almost
complete
a 16" kinescope, which had..a.square
the 3ovjat 'had developed both steel. and glass
kinescopes, ut they were notat the stn a from.which the
could be, put into prodzction,
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where the Germans did have something to do with the plan,
plan figures, Even
in some departments of NTI 1 0 the Germane helped in preparing
Although
they had influence mostly over t e erm
10.
Tube
11.
12.
dates of the projects rather than over the fiscal details.
The Ministry, did not make any rule that
the Germans have,no contact with the.plan figures, but two
factors inhibited such contacts greatly. First, many,,of the
Soviet department heads would not allow such contacts and,
second, most of the Germano were unwilling to aooept any,
responsibility for matters they couldn't later exercise any
control over and therefore avoided contact with,the-budget.
lit would 'be more likely that 30 were started, For more
ordinary cathode ray tubes the Institute had'a shrinkage of
10 to 20 percent.
in Production Stage "in' txhe' t1'88fi
'
The only cathode 'ray tubes
in mass produotion
were the 7- inchsize.
There was a rather large quantity of
these' being' produced.
inch tubes.
There was limited production of 9- and Z2-
In order to'get 20 good dark-trace cathode ray tubes, it was
necessary for NII 160 to start no more than 40 tubes, - butj
13. After the Soviet engineers had seen the bad effect of ion
bombardment in cathode ray tubes, they decided to incorporate
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ion traps in future types. The ion trap, used most frequently,
was the Bentgen (Dumont) trap, using a triode system. Most
of the tubes were given,lif.e tests at 50 mioroamperea at which
level the life, had to be 1,500 hours.
14. The high-pressure mercury lamps used to 'illuminate the dark-
trace tubes were exact copies of the old 0aram. lamp used in
.Germany during the war for the same jurpose. Originally
araa: made a range of these bulbs from 50 to 19000 watts in
size. Later 08W took over production of the bulb.
F They
worked very well with DC and had a life of about 500 hours.
With AC applied to the bulb, however, they did not work nearly
as:,.well and the life was.reduoed to something like 100 or 150
.hours. This reduced life was the result of the sputtering
of the cathodes which occurred when an alternating voltage
-was applied.
Xr uot,ion of Tube 3-7aohinerv
15. The development of tube making machinery-was the responsibility
of.a section referred to as OKB-M, physically located in the
same buildings as Nil 160. Nil '160
and OKB-M were in the satins Ministry but were not in the same
chief,directorate. The.OKB was responsible, however, for the
development of all machinery necessary for any chief directorate
of the Ministry.
it worked on the
development of machinery for the automatic finishing of kin.-
scopes. This project was to develop all the machinery for a
produotion line with a capacity of 100,000'.oathode'ray tubes
a month.
16.: There was astonishingly good cooperation between.Zavod .6.32 and
N'II 160 as far as exchange of ideas is concerned. Also,
since OKB-M did th4 development work for machinery for the.
entire Ministry, 0KB-M furnished 632 with plans,
blueprints, and possibly sample machines for production maohin-
ery for this latter plant.
17. During the war, Tungsram of-Budapest, Hungary,, furnished NII
,160 with tube machinery. This was taken from`the Hungarian
company by the Soviets
in place in Nil 160,
J These machines were still
a1as. Su ly to Nil 160,
18. The glass supply at Nil 160 .came- .fr.q three sources t A plant'
in Zaprudnaya, a plant in Nosoow, and'te'"'Institute's own glass
plant. Considerable difficulty was experienced with the
glass from the Institute's own plant. the glass
plant had capacity enough to supply all.the.glass that was
needed by the Institute, but the quality was very poor, '.,hence
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Electronics _Systems Development in the USSR.
23. The Soviets seemed to be very interested in the development of
systems, using electrostatic. deflection
t
would be much easier to use electromagnetic systems,
the possible difficulties that they might have with electro
static systems. However, in spite of the difficulties, which
the encountered, they were still workin on electro-
static deflection systems It is of
course possible that parallel work was being done on electro-
magnetic deflection systems
24?
25. where the lens and mechanical system forth
Schmidt optical system were madoe.
-1 Maksvtovr who developed a similar projection system, i
still aotive in Leningrad, and he is reputed to be a very
highly qualified man in the general field of optics.
ag WAteer? a?ls , f. USSR'
26. the materials used in~cathode ray tubes is
the mina, which was of good, quality, came from Siberia, The
27. Alba getters were used in most of the cathode ray tubes. They
were stabilized and were very active. Since the 8oviets,used
standards in the design of cathode ray tubes,
even the lumina forces were exactly the same as the tubes they
were copied from. The various screen-coating matirials used
included ZnSiO.,0 ZnO, Zn$, Zn-Ca-81 and V8-Zn$s
Znd was made from mine oxalate.rather than from sine
sulphide, and later activated with cerium. This coating had
a persistence smaller than 5 x 10-8,whioh was the limit of the
test equipment. .
26.. One of the two best German specialists on the coating of screens
is still in Moeoow. His name is R1e k . . In addition, the
8ovie?~s had obtained all the equipment from the factory run
by t'h'e other of these two specialists, a man by the name of
i
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19.
the dependence on outside suppliers. which glass
plant supplied what percentage of the Institute's requirements
ed fr
chan
i,_ Ls---
ti
om
g
me
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20. The glass factory at Zaprudnaya wasr set up to manufacture
lamp-bulb glass and the greatest part of.its production was
this type of glass. Moat of it went to the Elektro Zavod,
number 632, in Moscow. This plant, however, made kinescope
bulbs. Many of these were blown in full form, but they also
made the divided typed if they ground face
lates at th
p
is factory; the blanks, 25X1
grinding machinery was available at Nil 160.
must have been considerable. They had-at least
three ovens there, and the largest ba,d
a capacity of 250 tons. another had a 100-
ton capacity and the other was of comps able size. The plant
was set up for,continuous glass making.
21.. Naturally, NII,160's demands on the plant. were minor from a
quantity point of view, but they did put some quality restrio?
tions on the glass factory. The most seriousproblem that was
faced in making kinescope and oscillograph tubes was that of
getting glass for the bulbs. There was no mass production
of tube bulbs, and the cost of?such bulbs ref acted the dif+
ftoulty of making them. a 12 bulb cost 25X1
5,000 rubles. The Soviets knew that this was..their major
bottleneck and were working on improving the Supply system
for glass bulbs.
General Comments on Magnetron Developmentw Work
the entire
program for development of vacuum tubes wherein
e r work in this field as definitely progressive.
Even when?they did copying of magnetrons, procured from other
countries, the work was conducted in a more efficient manner
than in the case of other tubes.
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7,,
Same. When the Soviets took over his East German factory and
moved the machinery to Nil 160, & defected
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