Post-War Servicing Opportunities
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"Mediocre and half-baked technicians will be just out of luck." So said Radio-Craft editor Hugo Gernsback, writing in the January 1945 issue about the opportunities likely to be awaiting radioservicemen. Surprisingly, at least to me - but I suspect also to most of his readers at the time - Mr. Gernsback predicted that the majority of post-war electronics technician jobs will be for other than the kind of radio service work that existed before World War II. Major advances in factory automation with both electrical and mechanical innovations, when combined with recent advertising by consumer product manufacturers promising all sorts of amazing home appliances and entertainment gizmos, will assure a much wider and deeper (technically) variety of service work. Commercial, industrial, and domestic was predicted to require more troubleshooting, repair and maintenance savvy than merely swapping out vacuum tubes or tweaking potentiometers until "it seems right." Hence, the opening comment. The included chart of expected demand for household items shows that radios were not at the top of the chart for items which had pent-up demand once the war was over and factories reverted back to normal production rather than serving wartime requirements. ... Industrial electronic maintenance and servicing offers the radioman a profitable new field which will doubtless eclipse broadcast receiver servicing in the post-war world ... Hugo Gernsback The European war which is now drawing to a close, will return many thousands of radiomen from our armed forces. Most of them will go into the electronic and radio servicing field. We have many indications on this. During the past year hundreds of letters received by Radio-Craft from servicemen indicate that radio servicing will be one of the favorite occupations of former men of the armed forces. There are also thousands of ex-radioservicemen who were in this business before they entered the armed forces. These, too, in large numbers, will also wish to get back into their former line of work. It is safe to predict that for many years to come, after hostilities cease, radio servicing will be profitable to those who give real service and are expert in radio.
The reason for this, as the survey explains, is that the great publicity which radio manufacturers have given to post-war radio sets has no doubt caught the imagination of the American public. That means that people will not be so anxious to exchange their present sets for a 1942 model even if it is brand new. They feel that they will wish to wait for new type FM receivers, television combinations and others. To the serviceman this is a grand opportunity in servicing the old set which John Q. Public wishes to hang on to until the newer improved sets come out. It also means that from one to two years after the European war has ceased, the old sets will need a tremendous amount of radio servicing and overhauling. This is a real chance for the serviceman, because he will no doubt be much better paid in the post-war period than he was prior to 1942. He will have steady work, too, for a long time and an abundance of jobs. Radio servicing will, in many ways, be far different than it was in 1942. During the past years there has been tremendous progress in radio and particularly in electronics. There will be many new types of jobs during the next few years which never existed before. Many of our plants have taken to industrial electronics and there are few of them today that do not have some kind of electronic appliance. Sometimes these plants are in smaller cities or isolated in such a manner that the electronic manufacturer who originally supplied the device is handicapped in doing a quick repair job. That means that if the future radio serviceman has a good grounding in industrial electronics, he will no doubt be called in to do an electronic servicing job. A good tip to the future serviceman is to make himself acquainted with the plant managers in his locality so that if anything goes wrong he or the superintendent will know for whom to send in case anything happens to the electronic devices. The reason for this is that most industries - except the very large plants - will not have enough work to keep an electronic engineer on the job all the time, but they will need a good maintenance man. If they know that the outside independent serviceman can be relied upon, the job will go to him, or to the man who is best qualified to do this intricate work justice. It must be understood that all these ripe and profitable plums, will not fall into every serviceman's lap. That is not the way modern business works! The old-time radio serviceman certainly was not qualified for this important type of work. He will have to take on a complete up-to-date electronic education. No superintendent or plant manager would call in anyone to make repairs until assured of his competence. For that reason the post-war radio serviceman must be far better educated along radio and electronic lines than his predecessor ever was. Mediocre and half-baked technicians will be just out of luck. The post-war service-man must be an expert in his line because no one but an expert will be trusted to make vital repairs when the entire operation of the plant may depend on his judgment. That is the reason why the post-war serviceman must be able to absorb every bit of radio and electronic literature he can lay his hands on. He must have all the latest books on the subject. More than that, he must get acquainted with every possible electronic industrial appliance. That means that he has to send to practically every electronic manufacturer in the country for his literature and not only acquaint himself with the various models, but he must know all the ins and outs of each model. This, of course, means a good deal of work and a lot of study, But it can be done by any intelligent man who applies himself to it. There are rich rewards for this type of post-war radio work.
Posted March 10, 2021 |
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For some time to come, in the very nature
of things, not everybody will rush to a radio store trying to buy a new radio
receiver. A recent survey just to hand, shows, surprisingly, that other home
appliances will be much more in demand than new radios. The following tabulation
shows this: