What info have you on the transition from a numeric date-code to a letter system regarding L. Bernard tubesets? Any info where-upon the upper rung tube maker was basing his dating modell? Or was he blazin' his on trail?
Hi Raimey,
As we should know by now from previous posts, Bernard has always had a tubeset stamped with a sequential number followed by a '.' and a date.
The date was replaced by a letter datecode at the end of the 19th century. This was before the Belgians did it in 1922.
The only real data I have is that my 1898 dated Rieger has a date code of 'H' and a # 35321.
So at the very earliest, and assuming all letters were used, that would place 'L' at 1902.
By the way, just less than 1000 tubesets went through the Bernard shop in that time frame.
I'll remind people that the shop was held by Leopold's widow for a long time, because he passed on 7/11/1870, just days before the Franco-Prussian war.
Also Bernard seems to have only sold assembled tubesets, and not individual barrels.
Another interesting trivia is that the Paris proof house was actually hosted by the Bernard shop at least at the very beginning.
Best regards,
WC-
