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The six spares in a landfill is a dreadful thought, but here is the flipside: Gary Hough (SoCal TV collector who passed away in '89) found two NOS 15GP22s back East. He bought them for a couple dollars, but found great disappointment in the fact that they had lost vacuum still new in the boxes. I had a similar experience with one that was in a working set, then the next time I fired it up it had failed to lost vacuum. The vacuum loss has nothing to do with how much if any time is logged through usage, so NOS is not applicable in the condition of a 15GP22.
I was told by someone that the manufacturing process involved some kind of procedure whereby the tube was cooked in a vacuum chamber without the front lens on it. Then the front lens and mask were assembled to the tube after cooking, still while inside a vacuum chamber. Zenith, not wanting to pay RCA, had to put visible screws in the mask of their 15GP22 clone because they couldn't figure out how to do it the same way RCA did... But the two known Zeniths still have full vacuum (KNOCK ON WOOD!!!) And one of the Zenith 43M20s with that tube survived being slammed repeatedly against a wall in the Northridge Earthquake... Enough to knock all the knobs off and break one of the wheels and still no glass-to-metal seal cracks! I was terrified to pull the back off that set for MONTHS after the quake, as I was convinced the tube had probably been wrecked. Finally I did and What a relief!
I met one of the 15GP22 assemblyline girls about 10 years ago, and she did recall some strange details. I hate to admit that I can't remember her name. She lives (or lived) in Westwood, CA near UCLA. I did a TV repair housecall for her, and the subject came up. I will think hard to see if I can get a clue and try to pull her up on the database. But even if I find her, I think she was at least 80 then. She was a WWII widow who had originally started at RCA during the war and kept the job on due to loss of husband in war, as I recall her telling.
Charles
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