|
 I 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...
 "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..."
 Mr. 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...
 A 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...
 Albert 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...
 "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..."
 Reading 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...
 Reactel 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.
 2012 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...
 Here 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..."
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 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...
 If 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)...
 Take 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...
 Admittedly, 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..."
 The 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 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...
• 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, 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...
 Here 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...
 "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..."
 After 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 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 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...
 Crane 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.
 The 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...
 Decisions, 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...
 "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..."
|
 When 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...
 By 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...
 Here 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...
 Although 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...
 As 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 (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...
 It 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...
 This 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...
 Banner 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...
 This 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...
 In 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...
This 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...
Banner 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...
 An 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...
 World 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...
 Here 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...
 This 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...
 After 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 ...
 Albert 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 ...
Banner 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...
 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...
 Quite 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...
 Anyone 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...
 A 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...
 Technology 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...
 The 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...
 As 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... |
