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Delta Metal Dartmouth Street

It is incredible - the journey one can understand and applaud but operating a Capstan Lathe with such a disability seems impossible...
 
Amazing piece of film what an inspiration, I would love to know who he was?
 
Yes he certainly is an inspiration, what an effort to get to work and then work a full day with a disability and facing the long trek back home. He puts to shame the legions of layabouts these days who could work but won't and the rest of us have to keep them and their families. I do not include the people who have always worked but have lost their jobs due to the recession, but the "career layabouts".
 
Hi I've just found out that my grandfather George Greer used to work here in 68. I have found one of his old wage slips. Unfortunately he's be passed for 34 years and I'm just finding thingss out after my mom found some old paper work
 
Hello to everyone
My mum Gladys Jenkins worked at the Delta, Dartmouth street (in the canteen) from the early 1960’s. She actually organised my interview in 1963 for an office junior. I worked there until 1966 with such great characters. The company organised for a once a week day release to Garretts Green college for me. It was a really good company to work for.
 
Hi, my get grandad worked at delta metals in 1922 I’m sure I read he was there for 25 yrs , just looked on the 1921 census and it’s written that’s where he’s working, he committed suicide in 1931 after losing his job and a bad wife , are there any pics ?
 
Hi, Although the thread appears to be pretty old I thought that I would add my 'twopennerth':
In 1966 I transferred here from United Non-ferrous, Adderley Road which was part of the Delta Metal Group of companies. (Unfortunately, this company also no longer exists.) For my sins I was working shifts in the small laboratory based in Star Works, Heneage Street – a few hundred yards from the main factory which occupied both sides of Lister Street. You would not believe how dirty, decrepit and noisy the place was - it felt like stepping back into Dickensian times. The mould dressing used to prevent the cast metal from sicking to the moulds appeared everywhere as a black dust, including the Lab..
There were six or seven furnaces in operation whilst I was there and they all produced various brass mixtures - mainly from a mixture of scrap brass, copper ingots and spelter (zinc). Once this had been loaded into the furnace and it had got up to temperature, the Caster took a small ingot sample and sent it upstairs to the Lab using a wind-up ‘dumb waiter’ contraption. It was then up to the Lab staff to analyse the sample and issue instructions over a tannoy to (eg) add more spelter (zinc), or we’d switch on a lamp that indicated it was okay to pour the metal. As you can probably imagine, the dust and tannoy system going 24 hours a day did not go down too well with the local residents!
On a particularly hot summer evening I opened the pivoting cast iron framed window in the Lab to let more air in – to my horror the pivot bolts broke, the window gave way and crashed onto the pavement below. If anyone had been walking past at the time they would have been killed stone dead!
I also remember the time where literally tons of ‘used’ bullet casings were being used as part of the furnaces’ loading mixture – very often a ‘dud’ would explode in the furnace and the casing was shot out of the molten mix, or a fountain of molten metal would erupt!
Health & Safety? No such things at that time!
On one occasion the tannoy was left switched on all over the weekend, which caused much anguish to the locals as passing traffic noise was picked up, amplified and broadcast all weekend to them. I discovered that although its switch was in the ‘up/off’ position, its innards had not actually moved enough to break contact !
After a year or two in the Lab. I passed an aptitude test and moved over to the main offices as a Computer Operator. This was situated in one of the floors above the Midland Bank at the corner of Lister Street and Dartmouth Street.
For any of you that are technical ‘geeks’ the computer was an ICL 1901A with 16kb hard wired core-store (memory), paper tape input, a line printer and two magnetic tape decks. Oh, and a paper tape punch! All directed via a central console – no operating system! Over time the computer was successively upgraded to an ICL1903T running under George II operating system and incorporating some EDS8 (8Mb), and later, EDS16 disks. I remember that we did some processing for the Evening Mail to help them out with their introduction of an ICL computer.
I later moved into programming and was moved across to the Love Lane offices there. I believe the area was called ‘New Side’, which was probably appropriate when it was first built.
The Delta seemed to own the section of Love Lane for a few hundred yards from its junction with Dartmouth Street as it was gated off to prevent public access.
We very often used to frequent the Pot o’ Beer at lunchtime, but I preferred the Old Union Mill, which had a better pint of Ansell's’. There was also a little pub along the public stretch of Love Lane called the General Wolf. I only went there a couple of times as it was pretty decrepit, and empty most of the time. I used to enjoy a occasional forage through the mountains of stuff that ‘Fletchers – Home of the Motorist’ used to have. A lot of it must have come from the Austin motor works as there were always lots of Austin bits and pieces for sale at knock-down prices, which helped me keep my Austin 1100 on the road.
I only went to the Holly Lane sports’ ground a few times, but was impressed by how nice it was, and what a good pint of beer it sold!
Both the Delta company and the people who worked there were really great and it was a real body-blow when I learnt that the company would be closing down. They did offer people alternative employment at Delta Rods, West Bromwich, but I just could not bear the thought of commuting backwards and forwards there and decided to leave for pastures new. I attended the ‘Last Extrusion’ ceremony that took place and still have a piece of the extruded brass pawl. During the ‘clear out’ period before the actual closure, it was really heartbreaking to walk through silent, empty buildings and through the rows of vacant workbenches where several generations of people must have been busily engaged in earning a living at one time.
 
Hi, Although the thread appears to be pretty old I thought that I would add my 'twopennerth':
In 1966 I transferred here from United Non-ferrous, Adderley Road which was part of the Delta Metal Group of companies. (Unfortunately, this company also no longer exists.) For my sins I was working shifts in the small laboratory based in Star Works, Heneage Street – a few hundred yards from the main factory which occupied both sides of Lister Street. You would not believe how dirty, decrepit and noisy the place was - it felt like stepping back into Dickensian times. The mould dressing used to prevent the cast metal from sicking to the moulds appeared everywhere as a black dust, including the Lab..
There were six or seven furnaces in operation whilst I was there and they all produced various brass mixtures - mainly from a mixture of scrap brass, copper ingots and spelter (zinc). Once this had been loaded into the furnace and it had got up to temperature, the Caster took a small ingot sample and sent it upstairs to the Lab using a wind-up ‘dumb waiter’ contraption. It was then up to the Lab staff to analyse the sample and issue instructions over a tannoy to (eg) add more spelter (zinc), or we’d switch on a lamp that indicated it was okay to pour the metal. As you can probably imagine, the dust and tannoy system going 24 hours a day did not go down too well with the local residents!
On a particularly hot summer evening I opened the pivoting cast iron framed window in the Lab to let more air in – to my horror the pivot bolts broke, the window gave way and crashed onto the pavement below. If anyone had been walking past at the time they would have been killed stone dead!
I also remember the time where literally tons of ‘used’ bullet casings were being used as part of the furnaces’ loading mixture – very often a ‘dud’ would explode in the furnace and the casing was shot out of the molten mix, or a fountain of molten metal would erupt!
Health & Safety? No such things at that time!
On one occasion the tannoy was left switched on all over the weekend, which caused much anguish to the locals as passing traffic noise was picked up, amplified and broadcast all weekend to them. I discovered that although its switch was in the ‘up/off’ position, its innards had not actually moved enough to break contact !
After a year or two in the Lab. I passed an aptitude test and moved over to the main offices as a Computer Operator. This was situated in one of the floors above the Midland Bank at the corner of Lister Street and Dartmouth Street.
For any of you that are technical ‘geeks’ the computer was an ICL 1901A with 16kb hard wired core-store (memory), paper tape input, a line printer and two magnetic tape decks. Oh, and a paper tape punch! All directed via a central console – no operating system! Over time the computer was successively upgraded to an ICL1903T running under George II operating system and incorporating some EDS8 (8Mb), and later, EDS16 disks. I remember that we did some processing for the Evening Mail to help them out with their introduction of an ICL computer.
I later moved into programming and was moved across to the Love Lane offices there. I believe the area was called ‘New Side’, which was probably appropriate when it was first built.
The Delta seemed to own the section of Love Lane for a few hundred yards from its junction with Dartmouth Street as it was gated off to prevent public access.
We very often used to frequent the Pot o’ Beer at lunchtime, but I preferred the Old Union Mill, which had a better pint of Ansell's’. There was also a little pub along the public stretch of Love Lane called the General Wolf. I only went there a couple of times as it was pretty decrepit, and empty most of the time. I used to enjoy a occasional forage through the mountains of stuff that ‘Fletchers – Home of the Motorist’ used to have. A lot of it must have come from the Austin motor works as there were always lots of Austin bits and pieces for sale at knock-down prices, which helped me keep my Austin 1100 on the road.
II only went to the Holly Lane sports’ ground a few times, but was impressed by how nice it was, and what a good pint of beer it sold!
Both the Delta company and the people who worked there were really great and it was a real body-blow when I learnt that the company would be closing down. They did offer people alternative employment at Delta Rods, West Bromwich, but I just could not bear the thought of commuting backwards and forwards there and decided to leave for pastures new. I attended the ‘Last Extrusion’ ceremony that took place and still have a piece of the extruded brass pawl. During the ‘clear out’ period before the actual closure, it was really heartbreaking to walk through silent, empty buildings and through the rows of vacant workbenches where several generations of people must have been busily engaged in earning a living at one time.
I remember Delta Metal in Dartmouth Street. I would pass it on the way to school (Bloomsbury Girls Annexe) and then on the way to work at Benton & Stone in Aston Brook Street, my first job. Regards Sue
 
I worked in the Delta Metal wages office in 1967 and 1968 and then transferred to Delta Tubes at Winson Green. We used comptometers for quick calculations of various work rates for the men in the factory across the road. That's the only time I've ever seen a comptometer. They were a big clumsy version of todays calculators.
 
I worked in the Delta Metal wages office in 1967 and 1968 and then transferred to Delta Tubes at Winson Green. We used comptometers for quick calculations of various work rates for the men in the factory across the road. That's the only time I've ever seen a comptometer. They were a big clumsy version of todays calculators.
I worked for Delta Wire in the 70s. After reading your post I looked up the Comptometer and discovered that the first all-electronic desktop calculator by Sumlock Comptometer Ltd of the UK. So it seems Britain invented the World's first electronic calculator as well as the World's first Electronic Programmable Digital Computer (Colossus) developed at Bletchley Park during WWII.
 
When I first joined Charles Winn Valves in 1974, it was part of Delta metal. We shared the building in Granville St with Barker & Allen and Delta Marine. When we moved to Warwick St Deritend in 1976, Delta Marine came with us. They left when we were taken over by american company Tyco Valves.
 
I worked at Delta Metal Dartmouth Street from 1970 to 1975 when I took redundancy due to the planned move to West Bromwich.

I was a copy typist in the export department and the managers name was Les Noon.
I remember a Ron Whitaker who was married to a French woman and smelled of garlic every day, and another guy whose name I can't recall right now

Another girl came to work with us, her name was Val. She had long brown curly hair which she always wore down and I can remember here twirling it round her finger constantly lol.

I had 2 friends there called Evelyn who if I remember correctly worked in Accounts, and Jackie Poyner who worked as a draftswoman in the Design Department.
 
I worked in the Delta Metal wages office in 1967 and 1968 and then transferred to Delta Tubes at Winson Green. We used comptometers for quick calculations of various work rates for the men in the factory across the road. That's the only time I've ever seen a comptometer. They were a big clumsy version of todays calculators.
My grandfather worked there too and died in 1967. His name was Samuel khan. Any memory of him? I am trying to find some info.
 
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