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Today in Science History

Electronics-Themed Comics

Electronics-Themed Comics, January 1962 Radio-Electronics - RF CafeI have written before about the love-hate relationship a lot of the buying public had with television and radio repair shops and repairmen - similar to car owners and mechanics. Lots of jokes and skits (what today is termed a "meme") were created back in the heyday of in-home entertainment to make light of the situation. These four electronics-themed comics from a 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine are typical examples. The one from page 111 alludes to an issue that would almost never be seen today on a TV, unless maybe the AC power supply was on the fritz. A composite analog broadcast signal contained vertical and horizontal sync[ronization] components which...

3D-Shield Electronics from ESD

3D-Shield Electronics from ESD"Electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection is a significant concern in the chemical and electronics industries. In electronics, ESD often causes integrated circuit failures due to rapid voltage and current discharges from charged objects, such as human fingers or tools. With the help of 3D printing techniques, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) are 'packaging' electronics with printable elastomeric silicone foams to provide both mechanical and electrical protection of sensitive components. Without suitable protection, substantial equipment and component..."

TV and Radio Repair Featured in "Dragnet"

Television and Radio Repair Featured in "Dragnet" - RF Cafe Video for EngineersMr. Bob Davis, a seemingly endless source of little known and/or long forgotten historical radio and television technical trivia, apprised me of this short segment from the 1960s Dragnet television series, starring Sgt. Joe Friday. It features a guy, who turns out to be a ... well, I won't spoil it for you ... who proudly professes his thirty year career as a radio repairman. "...started back in the days of the old Crosleys, Atwater-Kents, Farnsworths. Those were real radios, well built, well designed. Nothing cheap about any of them. They didn't have transistors in those days, just tubes as big as light bulbs. That meant heavy chassis, heavy transformers, and we didn't fix them by simply slapping in a new part, either. We fixed the old parts. I wish...

Square-Corner UHF Reflector Beam Antenna

The Square-Corner Reflector Beam Antenna for Ultra High Frequencies, November 1940 QST - RF CafeA new word has been added to my personal lexicon: "sphenoidal." Author John Kraus used it to describe the wedge shape of a corner reflector. The Oxford Dictionary defines "sphenoid" thusly: "A compound bone that forms the base of the cranium, behind the eye and below the front part of the brain. It has two pairs of broad lateral "wings" and a number of other projections, and contains two air-filled sinuses." This "square corner" configuration - essentially a "V" shape, is shown to exhibit up to 10 dB of gain while being relatively (compared to a parabolic reflector) insensitive...

General Relativity

Spacetime Distortion General Relativity - RF CafeAlbert Einstein's general theory of relativity, published in 1915, fundamentally reshaped the way scientists understand gravity, space, and time. It extended his 1905 special theory of relativity, which described how the laws of physics are consistent for all observers in uniform motion and how light's speed is constant in a vacuum. However, the special theory did not address accelerating reference frames or gravitational forces. Einstein's general theory tackled these limitations by proposing that gravity is not a force in the traditional sense, but rather a curvature of spacetime caused by mass and energy. This profound insight would alter the course of 20th-century physics, influencing cosmology, black hole theory...

Memristor Analog Switching Neuromorphic Computing

Memristor Analog Switching Neuromorphic Computing - RF Cafe"The growing use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based models is placing greater demands on the electronics industry, as many of these models require significant storage space and computational power. Engineers worldwide have thus been trying to develop neuromorphic computing systems that could help meet these demands, many of which are based on memristors. Memristors are electronic components that regulate the flow of electrical current in circuits while also 'remembering' the amount of electrical charge that previously passed through them. These components could replicate the function of biological..."

Reflections on the News

Reflections on the News, February 1969 Electronics World - RF CafeReading through the news items in the vintage electronics magazines provides a mixture of important historical facts and figures along with some predictions on the future of the industry. Some of the predictions turn out to be amazingly accurate, even though in retrospect they might seem obvious. Take, for example, Sylvania VP Dr. Robert Castor's foresight about how, "the future growth of the semiconductor industry lies in a major switch from the production of individual components to solid-state subsystems that can be used as building blocks in electronic designs." "Well of course," you might be temped to say; however, at the time there were still significant hurdles to overcome related to material purity, wafer size, photolithography...

Many Thanks to Reactel for Their Long-Time Support!

Reactel Filters - RF CafeReactel has become one of the industry leaders in the design and manufacture of RF and microwave filters, diplexers, and sub-assemblies. They offer the generally known tubular, LC, cavity, and waveguide designs, as well as state of the art high performance suspended substrate models. Through a continuous process of research and development, they have established a full line of filters of filters of all types - lowpass, highpass, bandpass, bandstop, diplexer, and more. Established in 1979. Please contact Reactel today to see how they might help your project.

Electronics in 2012 AD

Electronics in 2012 AD, October 1962 Radio-Electronics - RF Cafe2012 came and went more than a decade ago. The date was 50 years in the future back in 1962 when Radio-Electronics magazine editor Hugo Gernsback asked industry leaders to cogitate on possibilities of the state of electronics in 2012. Let's see how they did. One guy predicted our communications would be in the 100 THz to 1,500 THz band, using 2 decimeter antennas. Nope. Another believed we would be communicating with aliens on a regular basis. A military dude partly hit the mark by predicting 2- and 3-year-olds would be sitting in front of "televideo screens" (cellphones) learning Esperanto and "other basic studies." Bell Labs believed most audiovisual material, along with commerce, would be done electronically; i.e., the World Wide Web. I'm not quite sure how to interpret the IT&T guy's prediction of replacing microwave space transmission with light wavelength waveguide transmission. Seems bassackward to me...

The Phone Scam Gram

The Phone Scam Gram - RF CafeHere is a unique approach to discouraging scam callers. A lot of scam calls are themselves AI, so can one AI detect and aviod another? "Gangster Granny! Meet Daisy: O2's new weapon against scammers. O2 has unveiled its new, unique weapon in its fight against scammers: Daisy, an AI-powered assistant designed to keep fraudsters talking and waste their time. As part of Virgin Media O2's 'Swerve the Scammers' campaign, Daisy's mission is to distract scammers with realistic, rambling conversations, helping protect potential victims while raising awareness about fraud. Her lifelike conversations, peppered with stories about family or hobbies like knitting, have kept fraudsters on the line for up to 40 minutes..."

Special Relativity

Special Relativity - RF Cafe

Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, a milestone in physics, transformed our understanding of space, time, and energy (mass). The theory, published in 1905, stemmed from Einstein's efforts to resolve inconsistencies in classical physics, specifically between Newtonian mechanics and electromagnetism as formulated by James Clerk Maxwell. By reconceiving space and time as interconnected and relative to the observer's frame of reference, Einstein established a framework that had profound implications for science and technology. To understand how this groundbreaking idea emerged, one must consider...

Werbel 2-Way Splitter for 500 MHz to 26.5 GHz

Werbel Microwave 2-Way Power Splitter for 500 MHz to 26.5 GHz - RF CafeWerbel Microwave's Model WM2PD-0.5-26.5-S is a wideband 2-way in-line power splitter covering of 500 MHz to 26.5 GHz with excellent return loss, low insertion loss, and high isolation performance. With ultrawideband performance, amplitude balance is typically 0.24 dB and phase unbalance is typically 2.6°. Insertion loss is low for the bandwidth, coming in at a typical 1.2 dB above 3 dB splitting loss. Return loss 16 dB typical. Isolation 18 dB typical. The device is precision-assembled and tested in the USA...

RCA Institutes Career Opportunity

RCA Institutes Ad, June 1969 Electronics World - RF CafeIf you wanted a career as an electronics technician at the end of World War II, the world was your oyster - so to speak. Electronics and communications trade magazines and publications like Mechanix Illustrated and Popular Science ran a plethora of ads monthly that offered unlimited opportunity to men seeking a career servicing the burgeoning market of postwar technological marvels. Even though the enclosures were not yet being marked with "No user serviceable parts inside," that fact was most people were not qualified - nor did they want - to monkey with the guts of radios, televisions, and other household appliances... (I provide a simulation to show the true zener diode circuit output)...

Electronics-Themed Comics

Electronics-Themed Comics, February 1962 Radio-Electronics - RF CafeTake time out of your busy workday to look at these three electronics-themed comics from the February 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics.. The page 32 comic reminds me of sometime in the late 1970s while working as an electrician (prior to enlisting in the USAF) when I was doing side jobs, and a guy had me wire up a receptacle for his big 25" screen (CRT) which he had mounted in a wall, with the chassis sticking out the back. It was in an upstairs room in a Cape Cod style house with lots of room behind the wall. He was a "man cave" pioneer with a full suite of high quality audiovisual equipment - even a Betamax machine! The page 81 comic exhibits the irony that would have existed in the day if American-made electronics equipment had been promoted in Japan, which they probably were not. In 1962, Japanese...

No Video for Satellite Direct-to-Cell

No Video for Satellite Direct-to-Cell - RF CafeAdmittedly, I mostly posted this because of the drawing. "While direct-to-cell (D2C) satellite communications were a big topic at the recent Brooklyn 6G Summit, the technology is already here, well before 6G's anticipated 2030 arrival. Apple and Google already offer D2C emergency messaging, and Starlink, T-Mobile and others are anticipated to follow. D2C satellite communications will be well established when 6G arrives. The 3GPP froze a 5G specification for Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) in Release 17 in March 2022, which means that NTN-compatible chips and components should be available now or soon. SpaceX has reduced the cost..."

Electricity & Physiology

Electricity & Physiology, January 1971 Popular Electronics - RF CafeThe subtitle of this article from a 1971 issue of Popular Electronics magazine, "From Quackery to Speculation to Programmed People," could to some extent still be applicable even though the author evidently meant to put an end to the "quackery" and "speculation" part of it. Indeed, a lot of advancement has been made in the fields of electrostimulation of weak or/or paralyzed muscles, healing of certain types of soft and hard tissues, suppressing sporadic muscle twitching and epileptic seizures, and other malady diagnosis and relief. Specifically tuned microwave frequencies have proven useful in healing and symptom relief as well. As with most articles on medical procedures, I cringe at some...

Anatech Intros 3 Filter Models for November

Anatech Electronics Intros 3 New Filter Models for November 2024 - RF CafeAnatech Electronics offers the industry's largest portfolio of high-performance standard and customized RF and microwave filters and filter-related products for military, commercial, aerospace and defense, and industrial applications up to 40 GHz. Three new C-band cavity bandpass filter models have been added to the product line, including a 4994 MHz BPF with a 50 MHz bandwidth, a 4950 MHz BPF with a 10 MHz bandwidth, and a 5785 MHz BPF with a 100 MHz bandwidth. Custom RF power filter and directional couplers designs can be designed and produced with required connector types when a standard cannot be found, or the requirements are such that a custom...

Engineering & Tech Headlines <Archives>

• 5G Is 42% of Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) in 2024

• Robert Dennard, DRAM Pioneer, Dies at 91

• TSMC's Energy Demand Drives Taiwan's Geopolitical Future

• Semiconductor Packaging Market on 5.6% CAGR 'Till 2028

• Altering Asteroid Trajectories with Nuclear X-Rays

Albert Einstein: A Short Biography

Albert Einstein: A Short Biography - RF CafeAlbert Einstein, one of the most renowned physicists in history, was born on March 14, 1879, in Ulm, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, part of the German Empire. His father, Hermann Einstein, was an engineer and salesman who ran an electrochemical factory, and his mother, Pauline Koch, managed the household and supported her son's education. Einstein had one sister, Maja, who was born in 1881 and with whom he had a lifelong close relationship. Einstein's extended family included several relatives who would play various roles in his life, both personally and professionally. His early family life was comfortable, though his parents moved frequently as they sought economic stability. Hermann Einstein's business ventures had varying success, and eventually, the family moved to Italy in 1894...

Rotary Stepping Switches

Rotary Stepping Switches - They're Everywhere, December 1967 Radio-Electronics - RF CafeHere is the second part of a series of articles about stepping switches appearing in 1967 issues of Radio-Electronics magazine. A standard (at the time) dial rotary phone was used as a familiar example in the part one. It delivers a single pulse for each number / letter set from 1, 2 (ABC), 3 (DEF), through 9 (WXY), 0 (Operator). On some phones, you can hear the clacking of the switch contacts as the spring-loaded dial rotates from the selected number back to home position. The stepping action as the result of dialing occurs at the telephone system switching and call routing equipment at central locations. There, stepping switches increment with each pulse received, and when the full number of pulse sets have arrived, the circuit is complete and the call put through to ring the phone...

2024 ARRL Field Day Results Published

2024 ARRL Field Day Results Published - RF Cafe"Results are published, and the numbers are in. They paint a picture of a very active 2024 ARRL Field Day. Nearly 1.3 million contacts were reported during the 24-hour event. That is up from 2023's 1.25 million contacts. That's likely indicative of the continued rise of Solar Cycle 25 leading up to the event, but more people also participated this year. Entries were received from all 85 ARRL and Radio Amateurs of Canada (RAC) sections, as well as from 27 different countries from outside the US and Canada. 'It is encouraging to see a rise in participation year to year,' said ARRL Contest Program Manager Paul Bourque, N1SFE. 'ARRL Field Day is amateur radio's premier event, and the hams turned out for it..."

Einstein Expounds on His New Theory

Einstein Expounds on His New Theory, 12/3/1919 The New York Times - RF CafeAfter searching for the first mention of Nikola Tesla in U.S. newspapers, I performed a similar search on Albert Einstein, again using editions available in the NewspaperArchive.com database. I was utterly surprised to find it in a 1919 issue of the The New York Times. His theory of Special Relativity was published in 1905 and his theory of General Relativity was published in 1915, so it took The NY Times four years to mention it. There is a reference to Dr. Einstein's' work on relativity in a 1915 edition of The Manitoban, from Winnipeg, Canada. The NY Times article is an actual interview with Albert Einstein, wherein at one point it is stated that there were perhaps only a dozen people in the world at that time who understood general relativity. Interestingly, Einstein uses the term "difform motion" to describe...

Exodus AMP2103P-LC, 0.5–3.2 GHz, 1 kW Pulse SSPA

Exodus AMP2103P-LC, 0.5–3.2 GHz, 1 kW Pulse SSPA - RF CafeExodus Advanced Communications, is a multinational RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. We are pleased to announce the model AMP2103P-LC, dual-mode (CW & pulse) amplifier covering 800 to 3200 MHz. 1000 watt peak pulse power, or 500 watts CW. Ideal for automotive pulse/radar EMC-testing & commercial applications. Pulse widths to 560 μsec, duty cycle to 10%, 60 dB gain, and outstanding pulse fidelity. Monitoring parameters for forward/reflected power in watts and dBm, VSWR, voltage, current, and temperature, with unprecedented reliability and ruggedness in a compact 7U chassis...

Sally, the Service Maid

Sally, the Service Maid: The Case of the Silent Speaker, April 1944 Radio-Craft - RF CafeSally Mason was the soldering iron-wielding heroette (heroine sounds too much like the narcotic) of Nate Silverman's "Sally, the Service Maid" series that ran in Radio-Craft magazine during the years of World War II. As I noted in the previous episode, many of the nation's women were left behind to run their husband's, father's and/or son's electronics sales and repair businesses when they went off to save the world from aggressive Communists, Socialists, Maoists, Nazis, and other nasty types. Some of those ladies had already become very adept at troubleshooting, component replacement, and aligning radio and television sets, while some were left to learn at the School of Hard Knocks. Sally's father, Gus Mason...

Thanks to Crane Aerospace & Electronics for Their Support!

Crane Aerospace & Electronics - RF CafeCrane Aerospace & Electronics' products and services are organized into six integrated solutions: Cabin Systems, Electrical Power Solutions, Fluid Management Solutions, Landing Systems, Microwave Solutions, and Sensing Components & Systems. Our Microwave Solution designs and manufactures high-performance RF, IF and millimeter-wave components, subsystems and systems for commercial aviation, defense, and space including linear & log amplifiers, fixed & variable attenuators, circulators & isolators, power combiners & dividers, couplers, mixers, switches & matrices, oscillators & synthesizers.

Electronic Navigation in Flight

Electronic Navigation in Flight, August 1962 Radio-Electronics - RF CafeThe AN/MPN-13|14 mobile radar system I worked on while enlisted in the U.S. Air Force was designed and fielded around the time this Electronic Navigation in Flight article appeared in a 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine. It had been upgraded a few times by 1979 when I was in Air Traffic Control Radar Repairman technical school at Keesler AFB, Mississippi; however, the original system did not featured a Doppler capability. The fully RF analog system could not provide air traffic controllers with speed data, but it did use physical mercury delay lines to provide a stationary target (ground, and to some degree, rain, clutter) cancellation by inverting and summing a real-time radar...

Why Color-TV Makers Worry

Anxiety Amid Affluence: Why Color-TV Makers Worry, December 27, 1965 Electronics Magazine - RF CafeDecisions, decisions, decisions. As the title states, color television manufacturers were, in 1965 when this Electronics magazine article was published, finding themselves between a rock and a hard place, as the saying goes, regarding a change from vacuum tubes to transistors. The buying public (aka consumers) had mixed emotions about the newfangled semiconductors based at least partly on bad information about transistors. Transistors had been designed in various circuits for a decade and a half and were gaining rapidly in performance and reliability. The price was coming down, but as reported here, still cost $5 to $10 apiece compared to a $1 vacuum tube. Company management needed to decide whether to delay implementing the new engineering and production methods required to deal with transistors...

The 1st Virtual Meeting Was in 1916

The 1st Virtual Meeting Was in 1916 - RF Cafe"At 8:30 p.m. on 16 May 1916, John J. Carty banged his gavel at the Engineering Societies Building in New York City to call to order a meeting of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers. This was no ordinary gathering. The AIEE had decided to conduct a live national meeting connecting more than 5,000 attendees in eight cities across four time zones. More than a century before Zoom made virtual meetings a pedestrian experience, telephone lines linked auditoriums from coast to coast. AIEE members and guests in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, New York, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco had telephone receivers at their seats so they could listen..."

Electronics-Themed Comics May 1969 and April 1960 Electronics World

Electronics-Themed Comics, May 1969 and April 1960 Electronics World - RF CafeWhen I saw this first electronics-themed comic in the May 1959 issue of Electronics World, my first thought was how most people today probably cannot relate to the task of installing and adjusting a rooftop antenna for televisions. Ditto for FM antennas. Most people who still watch TV use cable, although some have satellite TV. Then I thought about how Ham radio operators are the last vestige of civilians who rely on antennas and over-the-air radio communications (other than the world's 4.5 billion cellphone users who don't realize their phones are radios). Television antenna design and installation was never a high-tech sport for typical homeowners as it is for Amateurs; it was just a necessary nuisance. Finally, it occurred to me than for a growing number of Hams...

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story

Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story - RF Cafe Video for EngineersBy now, most people involved with spread spectrum communications are (or should be) aware that Hollywood starlet Hedy Lamarr is credited for being the first to suggest a frequency hopping scheme for secure communications. If you do a Google search on Hedy Lamarr and spread spectrum, you see that except for a few mentions on tech websites, it has only been in the news since the end of the last decade. Scientific American magazine ran an article titled, "Hedy Lamarr: Not Just a Pretty Face," in 2008. Google honored her in 2015 with a Doodle on their homepage. "The most beautiful woman in the world," with the assistance of her co-inventor-composer George Antheil...

All on Quarter-Inch Mylar

All on Quarter-Inch Mylar, December 1966 Popular Electronics - RF CafeHere for your enjoyment at the end of another week are three more vintage electronics-themed comics - this time from a 1966 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. The "quarter-inch Mylar" referenced in the title is recorder tape used in the very popular machines of the day. Not only were serious" music aficionados huge proponents of the medium, but so were the many recreational users. There was a sort of mystique involved with being able to record and instantly play back even normal conversations - sort of like with videos these days, except there is no mystique anymore because most users couldn't care less about the technology which enables their proclivities...

Electronics Newsletter c.1965 - Satellite Radio & TV

Electronics Newsletter, December 13, 1965 Electronics Magazine - RF CafeAlthough less than a decade had passed since NASA launched its first satellite (Explorer 1), planners there were already dreaming of the day when direct satellite-to-home and satellite-to-car signals would be broadcast on a commercial basis. This 1965 issue of Electronics magazine notes an intention to begin with FM radio station airing akin to what we know today as satellite radio. Then, by 1977 the country would be treated to satellite-to-home television programming powered by a space-borne SNAP-8 (Space Nuclear Auxiliary Power) generator. Sirius XM Radio made its debut in 2001, while home satellite TV service began in 1976. Also mentioned is the USSR's fourth failed attempt to safely land an instrument package (Luna 8, aka Lunik 8) on the Moon...

Engineering & Science Crossword Puzzle for February 23

Engineering & Science Crossword Puzzle February 23, 2020 - RF CafeAs with my hundreds of previous science and engineering-themed crossword puzzles, this one for February 23, 2020, contains only clues and terms associated with engineering, science, physical, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc., which I have built up over nearly two decades. Many new words and company names have been added that had not even been created when I started in the year 2002. You will never find a word taxing your knowledge of a numbnut soap opera star or the name of some obscure village in the Andes mountains. You might, however, encounter the name of a movie star like Hedy Lamarr or a geographical location like Tunguska, Russia, for reasons which, if you don't already know, might surprise you.

Meteor Scatter

Meteor Scatter, April 1953 QST - RF CafeMeteor (burst) scatter communications is an excellent example of where hobbyists - in this case amateur radio operators - have contributed mightily to technology. It could be argued that a big part of the reason for such occasions is that many people involved in science type hobbies are employed professionally in a similar capacity, and their extracurricular activities are a natural extension of what pays for the pastimes. It seems amazing to me that meteor scatter as a means of achieving upper atmosphere reflections of radio signals went undiscovered until 1953, but evidently that is the case. Meteor scatter is a very popular form of amateur radio challenge these days, with much activity when the bigger meteor showers are underway. Prior to 1953, meteor shower study was the sole domain of astronomers...

Bilectro "One Hander" Soldering Tool

Bilectro "One Hander" Soldering Tool, January 1972 Popular Electronics - RF CafeIt seemed like a reasonable idea, but the absence of "One Hander" soldering tools on the market today - or any time in the last half century for that matter - is empirical proof that the concept is not feasible. In principle, being able to feed the solder into the joint area with a squeezable pistol grip setup is not so different than modern wire welding machines that basically do the same thing (I have one). It was probably the lack of stiffness of the solder wire that caused the problem since keeping it on the joint would be difficult. Preventing the flux from jamming the solder feed tube was no doubt an issue as well. Oh well, it was worth a try. Today's surface mounted components could never be soldered with such a device, even if modernized to accommodate the smaller sizes...

Get Your Custom-Designed RF Cafe Gear!

Custom-Designed RF-Themed Cups, T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks (Cafe Press) - RF CafeThis assortment of custom-designed themes by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins, Purses, Sweatshirts, Baseball Caps, and more, all sporting my amazingly clever "RF Engineers - We Are the World's Matchmakers" Smith chart design. These would make excellent gifts for husbands, wives, kids, significant others, and for handing out at company events or as rewards for excellent service. My graphic has been ripped off by other people and used on their products, so please be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. I only make a couple bucks on each sale - the rest goes to Cafe Press. It's a great way to help support RF Cafe. Thanks...

Promote Your Company on RF Cafe

Sponsor RF Cafe for as Little as $40 per Month - RF CafeBanner Ads are rotated in all locations on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each weekday. RF Cafe is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world. With more than 17,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for text and images. Your Banner Ads are displayed on average 225,000 times per year! New content is added on a daily basis, which keeps the major search engines interested enough to spider it multiple times each day. Items added on the homepage often can be found in a Google search within a few hours of being posted. If you need your company news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be...

How Far Can You Go in Electronics Without a Degree?

How Far Can You Go in Electronics Without a Degree?, September 1957 Popular Electronics - RF CafeThis story reads like an infomercial for IBM, which it probably is. Of course infomercials had not been invented by 1957, so IBM was ahead of its time. The answer to the article's title, "How Far Can You Go in Electronics Without a Degree?" was the same 55 years ago as it is today: As far as your intellect and ambition will take you. Back then, as with today, few people could rise to the level of design engineer without a college degree. However, there are many aspects of electronics that requires no formal education at all if you possess the requisite skills. I never have bought into the feel-good lie about anyone being able to be whatever he or she wants to be. Some people simply cannot achieve the mastery necessary to do a particular job...

Look How They're Packaging Power

Look How They're Packaging Power, December 1962 Popular Electronics - RF CafeIn the early 1960s, nickel-cadmium (NiCad or NiCd) batteries were the way of the future due to a combination of high charge storage density and recharging ability. Carbon-zinc (C-Zn) cells were well established by then and had performed reliably during World War II and in Korea. Alkaline batteries were considered the de facto high standard for critical applications that required longer life and higher current than C-Zn could supply, but were (and still are) considerably more expensive. Mercury cells exhibited a fairly constant voltage level during useful life, which made them preferable for applications with a low voltage variance tolerance. Lithium-ion (Li-Ion) cells, those things that rule today's battery domain, were not much more than a laboratory curiosity at the time. This 1962 Popular Electronics magazine article provides a good bit of history...

Get Your Custom-Designed RF Cafe Gear!

Custom-Designed RF-Themed Cups, T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks (Cafe Press) - RF CafeThis assortment of custom-designed themes by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins, Purses, Sweatshirts, Baseball Caps, and more, all sporting my amazingly clever "RF Engineers - We Are the World's Matchmakers" Smith chart design. These would make excellent gifts for husbands, wives, kids, significant others, and for handing out at company events or as rewards for excellent service. My graphic has been ripped off by other people and used on their products, so please be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. I only make a couple bucks on each sale - the rest goes to Cafe Press. It's a great way to help support RF Cafe. Thanks...

Promote Your Company on RF Cafe

Sponsor RF Cafe for as Little as $40 per Month - RF CafeBanner Ads are rotated in all locations on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each weekday. RF Cafe is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world. With more than 17,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for text and images. Your Banner Ads are displayed on average 225,000 times per year! New content is added on a daily basis, which keeps the major search engines interested enough to spider it multiple times each day. Items added on the homepage often can be found in a Google search within a few hours of being posted. If you need your company news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be...

How the J-K Flip-Flops

How the J-K Flip-Flops, January 1969 Radio-Electronics - RF CafeAn alternate title for this article that appeared in a 1969 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine could have been, "How to Build a J-K Flip-Flop." Author Leonard Geisler takes the reader through a step-by-step assembly of a functional J-K flip-flop using a collection of 1- 2- and 3-input NAND gates. The 1-input NAND, in case you are wondering, is used as an inverter. The piece reads like an in-depth first-semester electrical engineering technician course textbook. In the process of building the J-K, an R-S (reset/set) flip-flop is described. Nowhere does Geisler offer an explanation of from where the "J" and the "K" input labels come. According to electrical engineer Sourav Bhattacharya blog, it was Dr. Eldred Nelson of Hughes Aircraft who first coined the term J-K flip-flop...

Remote Control Weapons

Remote Control Weapons, August 1944, Radio-Craft - RF CafeWorld War II brought about the first wireless remotely controlled weapons. Prior to radio technology, bombs and missiles needed to either be within a distance serviceable by detonation wires, or were set off using mechanical or electrical timers. Both of those methods required the operator to gain access to the target area at a time relatively close to when the attack was to occur. Army battalions did have warheads with spooled wires attached that enabled them to control the time of detonation and even in some instances some degree of steering, but range was limited. Wireless technology enabled weapons to be delivered and controlled over great distances. Missiles could be directed enroute and bombs could be planted practically anytime and anywhere to await a signal when appropriate. Hugo Gernsback wrote a short op-ed...

Bionics a Weird World

Bionics a Weird World, October 1962 Popular Electronics - RF CafeHere is an interesting article that appeared in a 1962 issue of Popular Electronics magazine discussing some of the early electronic system developments that were based on sensory elements found in nature. I'm a bit surprised and disappointed that the author made the mistake of equating a bat's sound-based detection and navigation system to radar rather than sonar. Yes, the principles of operation are the same regarding transmitting a signal and then computing the distance based on the round-trip time of the reflected signal, but there is a fundamental difference between radar which uses radio (the 'ra' part of radar) signals and sonar which uses the sound (the 'so' part of sonar) signals. I would bet that if I had the following December or January edition of the magazine, I would find a letter to the editor...

Television and FM Antennas

Television and FM Antennas, January 1948 Radio-Craft - RF CafeThis article on the design and use of antennas for television and FM radio was printed in a 1948 issue of Radio-Craft magazine. Equations and charts are provided for calculating element lengths for half-wave antennas, including directors and reflectors. Many types of antennas - dipole, stacked dipole, folded dipole, conical, adjustable "V," cross-element - are discussed regarding siting issues (location and height above the ground), and radiation patterns. It is a pretty good primer for someone new to antennas, and makes a great supplement to the data furnished in study guides for obtaining a Ham radio license...

Commercial Aspects of Single-Sideband

Commercial Aspects of Single-Sideband, May 1956 Radio & Television News - RF CafeAfter discussing the technical benefits of single-sideband (SSB) amplitude modulated (AM) commercial transmission versus double-sideband + carrier standard AM, author Jack Brown concludes with a chart plotting the relative cost of each method versus output power. The result: Transmitters with less than 100 watts output the initial equipment cost of a single-sideband transmitter is greater than its standard AM counterpart. My guess is that with today's equipment the chart would look a lot different, and there may be no dollar cost benefit either way from a hardware perspective. The benefit of SSB of course is in spectrum efficiency and, especially for very high powers, operational cost savings on electricity bills. Even so, commercial AM broadcast radio stations in the U.S. still transmit using ...

Bonanza: Look to the Stars - Albert Michelson Light Speed Measurement

Bonanza: Look to the Stars - Albert Michelson Light Speed Measurement - RF Cafe Video for EngineersAlbert Michelson is a name known to anyone who has taken (and paid attention during) a course in physics for his being the first person to accurately measure the speed of light in air. Born in 1852 to Jewish parents in Poland, his family emigrated to America in 1855 initially settling in Virginia City, Nevada. That happens to be where the fictional TV family of the Cartwrights owned their sprawling Ponderosa ranch in the series Bonanza. Screenwriters for the show took a bit of historical liberty in depicting young Michelson as having attending primary school in ...

Promote Your Company on RF Cafe

Sponsor RF Cafe for as Little as $40 per Month - RF CafeBanner Ads are rotated in all locations on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each weekday. RF Cafe is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world. With more than 17,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for text and images. Your Banner Ads are displayed on average 225,000 times per year! New content is added on a daily basis, which keeps the major search engines interested enough to spider it multiple times each day. Items added on the homepage often can be found in a Google search within a few hours of being posted. If you need your company news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be...

Calvin's Father Explains the Country Shutdown Philosophy

Calvin & Hobbes Bridge Weight Limit (Watterson) - RF Cafe

This has always been one of my favorite Calvin & Hobbes comic strip episodes. Calvin's father, a patent attorney, is famous for providing zany explanations to Calvin's inquiries about physics, astronomy, and other science subjects which he knows nothing about. Here, Calvin asks how weight limits are determined for bridges. His father's answer seems a perfect analogy to what politicians are doing to our economy today in response to the Wuhan Virus pandemic. I'm surprised this comic has not been a "viral" meme on social media websites - which maybe it is but I wouldn't know since I do not visit them, so I'll take credit for it. IMHO, the shutdowns are entirely unnecessary except in the worst areas. "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." - former Chicago mayor...

Fundamentals of Color TV

Fundamentals of Color TV, March 1954 Radio & Television News - RF CafeQuite a few articles on color television were published in trade and hobby magazines in the 1950s and 1960s as the technology was adopted and fine tuned. The electronic circuitry aspect of transmitting and receiving chromaticity, intensity, synchronization, and audio was impressive, but the science that went into color research was equally amazing. As with so many things we take for granted because someone else did all the hard work of figuring out how to make something work and then making it available to us at an affordable price, the physics of human color perception needed intense study in order to produce a pleasing image on the cathode ray tube (CRT). The key to understanding color is the chromaticity diagram, based in the human tristimulus color space, which is described in detail herein...

Radios Serviced by Observation

Radios Serviced by Observation, September 1945, Radio-Craft - RF CafeAnyone who has done a lot of electronics troubleshooting - especially on a wide variety of hardware - knows that proficiency depends on acquiring a 'feel' for how things ought to be. An oft-given example is that bank tellers and store clerks are taught to spot counterfeit bills not by showing them what all the different phony currency looks like, but what real money looks like. That way, anything that does not look familiar is readily apparent. The same philosophy has served technicians and engineers well since the beginning of electrical and electronic circuits. The more senses that can be drawn upon to facilitate troubleshooting, the more quickly you are likely to pinpoint the problem. Depending on the symptoms of the failure, sniffing the assembly for toasted or cracked components and looking for discolored areas is a good first step for catastrophic scenarios. Broken wires and failed solder joints are very common causes, as are partially plugged-in or contaminated...

How the Audion Was Invented

How the Audion Was Invented, January 1947 Radio-Craft - RF CafeA few days ago I mentioned that a popular early form of radio detector circuit involved the used of a flame - yes, the flame of a fire, not a romantic significant other. The subject arose in a couple articles in the January 1947 issue of Radio-Craft magazine that celebrated the 40th anniversary of Lee de Forest's Audion vacuum tube invention. This particular piece was authored by de Forest himself, who was a personal friend of Radio-Craft editor Hugo Gernsback. It is a very interesting autobiographical account of the early days of experimentation and the evolution of what eventually became the world's first mass producible signal amplifying device. You will also read that de Forest created the designation of the "B" battery for a reason he makes obvious. Also, although you have probably seen pictures of the old household type gas light fixture...

Exploring the Infinitesimal

Exploring the Infinitesimal, June 1948 Radio News - RF CafeTechnology builds on its own successes in order to evolve. This article from a 1948 issue of Radio News magazine reporting on the relatively newly perfected electron microscope. As electronics moved from the macro scale in the form of vacuum tubes and large, high voltage- and power-handling leaded components (resistors, inductors, capacitors) to semiconductors and smaller, lower voltage and power components, using a standard optical type microscope was not good due to small features on the IC die. As more powerful microscopes were developed, engineers and scientists were able to develop semiconductor circuits with smaller features. That enabled more compact, higher performance electronic microscopes to be built ... and the cycle continued to where we are today. It is sort of another way of looking at Moore's law...

Japanese Technology - When You're Second, You Try Harder

Japanese Technology - When You're Second, You Try Harder, December 13, 1965 Electronics Magazine - RF CafeThe December 1965 issue of Electronics magazine reported in multiple articles on the state of Japan's electronics industry. Japan's indisputable lead today in many realms of semiconductor, commercial, and consumer products proves successful implementation of the strategy described in these articles. Per this piece's NTT employee authors, "In one decade, Japan's semiconductor industry has become the world's second largest. Pioneering engineers, a variety of unusual devices, and breakthroughs in miniaturization techniques account for phenomenal growth." A notable claim is taking credit for inventing the ceramic "pill" packaging format for high frequency transistors...

What's New in Transistors

What's New in Transistors, June 1954 Radio-Electronics - RF CafeAs with most new discoveries, advancements came quickly with transistors. A little more than six years after Messrs. Brattain, Shockley, and Bardeen announced their invention of a positive gain, point contact transistor, this article in Radio-Electronics magazine reports on the wonders of junction diodes and transistors that eliminate the mechanical interface of the "cat's whisker" that was vulnerable to failure due to shock, vibration, and temperature changes. Note how closely spaced the patent numbers mentioned are for Sidney Darlington's compound transistor (aka a Darlington pair), Shockley's bistable transistor oscillator, Gordon Raisbeck's NPN-PNP balanced pair amplifier, and Robert Blakely's 3-terminal transistor mixer. Bell Labs, IBM, and the other big name research companies and universities...

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