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By Emily Rees on

Uncovering the C.O. Stanley Pye Collection: A family business

Emily Rees discusses how private archives, like the C.O. Stanley Pye Collection, can offer invaluable insights into the history of media in Britain.

How do we discover more about the history of media in Britain? A lot of information comes from the collections and archives of individuals and companies who played a key role in developing British film, television and radio. The National Science and Media Museum is home to several of these collections, which are used as the basis for public exhibitions. However, the journeys of these collections into the museum’s archive are not always straightforward and, sadly, large amounts of Britain’s media history will never be archived because it has been thrown away or misplaced.

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Television and radio manufacturing pioneer C.O. Stanley (1899–1989)

The C.O. Stanley collection, which pertains to the history of radio, television and communications manufacturer Pye Ltd, might have met such a fate. Fortunately, in the 1990s, C.O. Stanley’s grandson Nicholas Stanley decided to piece together the history of his grandfather’s tenure as Pye’s owner and director, which ran from 1928 until 1966. In the process he saved hundreds of invaluable files from being thrown away.

I have been given the task of working with the 45 boxes of material that Nicholas Stanley uncovered, and which he bequeathed to the museum in the 2000s.

I have been uncovering the story of how these nearly-lost documents were pieced together, forming a vital collection that describes the development of media and communications technology in Britain from the 1930s to the 1960s. This is a particularly exciting time period, especially for television, which developed from an experimental service before the war into the dominant leisure activity in most British homes.

C.O. Stanley was dedicated to the expansion of television. Pye television receivers sat in homes all over the country, and many of the programmes that people watched on them were filmed using Pye studio equipment, some of which is now held in the museum’s object collection in Bradford.

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Pye promotional material for television sets, 1949

What’s so fascinating about working with a collection that relates to both a person and a company is the mixture of private and institutional material it contains. The collection tells the story of the rise and eventual fall of Pye (it was bought by Philips in 1966), which is also the story of the rise and fall of its central figure, C.O. Stanley. The collection reveals a man who was both a pioneer and visionary, but whose dogmatic nature increasingly prevented his visions from being realised as the years passed.

Working with this collection, I was surprised by its very human element: among finances, accounts and endless memos lies the history of the Stanley family. I came across C.O. Stanley’s Latin certificates from secondary school; letters from his only son John, asking his mum to send him more sweets at boarding school; family photographs from holidays to Greece in the 1970s; and several of C.O. Stanley’s passports dating back to the 1930s, full of stamps from across the globe. The collection covers the lives and deaths of many Stanley family members and includes birth, marriage and death certificates, alongside family trees and photographs of relatives dating back to the 1890s.

Needless to say, Pye’s personal history is closely intertwined with the history of the wider Stanley family, so it is appropriate that this archive was pieced together by a family member. But the other vital elements of this story are the employees of the Pye company—indeed, Nicholas Stanley found a large chunk of the material in the vaults of the former Pye factory in Cambridge.

Correspondence in the collection tells of how he found several dusty boxes, all of which were going to be thrown away if he had not come looking for them. The rest of the material that Nicholas Stanley found came from former colleagues and employees of his grandfather at Pye.

The collection reveals that he wrote dozens of letters to anyone who might be able to provide information about Pye and C.O. Stanley. The varied and detailed responses to his appeals serve as testimony to the enduring impact Pye and C.O. Stanley made on its employees’ lives. This part of the archive forms a kind of patchwork quilt of various people’s memories, documents and photographs, all of which now help to tell Pye and C.O. Stanley’s story.

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Pye factory workers

When I first began looking through the C.O. Stanley collection I expected to find lots of dry material relating to company finances, with perhaps some odd gems such as adverts for TV and radio sets, some interesting photographs or perhaps a controversial exchange of letters. I did not expect to find the story of a grandson who had decided to uncover his own family’s history and, in the process, saved an integral part of Britain’s media history. It reminds us that the archive can be a highly personal place and that the history of companies and manufacturers is also the history of people: not just the directors, but all the employees and their families.

5 comments on “Uncovering the C.O. Stanley Pye Collection: A family business

  1. I was in my early 20’s when I worked in the Sales office a few years from CO’s office.
    I never knew well enough to have a conversation but I had an admiration for a man who had built a company we loved and couldn’t do enough to promote. I recall we often worked Saturday mornings for free as we were so proud of “our” company and it’s achievements. My Mother and other family members had worked in the company before me.
    I was with sadness that we witnessed the demise of the Pye Group that appeared to be asset stripped by Philips of Eindhoven. One amazing thing I recall is the Friday I belive it was when CO had a phone call from the Aviation Authority asking if we had underwater TV cameras. The needed to find the BOAC Comet which had crashed at Elbe. The story goes that CO said no but we will have by Monday! The engineers worked the weekend taking a standar camera and put it in an oil drum with car headlight welded to a bar across the front. It was taken to Jesus Green Swimming pool and tested and flown out at the beginning of the week. They found the Comet with it to the best of my knowledge.

    That was typical of a man who would never be defeated. I think all of in Sales had a massive admiration for him as well as his brother EJ who was the Sales Director and a fomer Irish schoolmaster as I recall. I am to this day proud to have worked for his company. I will be 80 next year so all of this was a long time ago for me.

  2. Corrected Version.
    I was in my early 20’s when I worked in the Sales office a few yards from CO’s office.
    I never knew him well enough to have a conversation but I had an admiration for a man who had built a company with loved from a small instrument company he initially purchased called W.G. Pye hence the company name we loved “our” company and couldn’t do enough to promote it. I recall we often worked Saturday mornings for free as we were so proud of “our” company and its achievements. My Mother and other family members had worked in the company before me.
    It was with sadness that we witnessed the demise of the Pye Group that appeared to be asset stripped by Philips of Eindhoven.

    One amazing thing I recall is the Friday when CO had a phone call from the Aviation Authority asking if we had underwater TV cameras. They needed it to find the BOAC Comet which had crashed at Elbe and gone down in the sea. The story goes that CO said no but we will have by Monday! The engineers worked the weekend taking a standard camera and put it in an oil drum with car headlight welded to a bar across the front. It was taken to Jesus Green Swimming pool and tested and flown out at the beginning of the next week. They found the Comet with it to the best of my knowledge.

    That was typical of a man who would never be defeated. I think all of in Sales had a massive admiration for him as well as his very popular brother EJ who was the Sales Director and a former Irish schoolmaster as I recall. I am to this day proud to have worked for his company and still have fond memories of my days at Pye of Cambridge. I will be 80 next year so all of this was a long time ago for me.

  3. Hi,

    I am researching recording tapes (12″) that carry a sticker of PYE Recording Studios, dated 8/8/1977. Does anyone have a suggestion if there is a PYE Recording Studio archive?

    Looking forward to your responds.

    Hope this finds you well.

    Jaap Alberts,
    Leicester.

  4. I worked on the first BBC C olour outside broadcast units,,still have manyPYE/PHILIPS items purchased from PYE TVT coldhams lane
    C ambrige.
    I built two obu owned by me with All PYE/PHILIPS equipment.
    Still use some equipment today in private studio complex.
    I retain lots of manuals /documents relating to these companies.
    and much more.

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