|
 The
National Association for Amateur Radio® (ARRL) is
seeking talented individuals
to join our team and help advance the Amateur Radio Service. We are currently
hiring for several impactful positions: • RFI Lab Engineer Support ARRL's
mission to protect and enhance spectrum access by managing and resolving Radio
Frequency Interference (RFI) cases • W1AW Station Manager This is a rare opening and
exciting opportunity to lead operations at W1AW • Public Relations & Outreach Manager
• Awards Program Supervisor • Development Associate • IT Support Specialist • Logbook of The World Support Associate
• Membership
Manager...
 December is traditionally the issue for
magazines to sum up accomplishments of the ending year and make predictions for
the next year. Radio-Craft magazine was no exception, but in 1936 they
went ten steps farther and prognosticated a decade into the future - all the way
to 1946! It is actually a tongue-in-cheek reprint from Pathe News magazine.
However, note the drawing of "professor teaches 2 million pupils," where he is instructing
via television and the railroad company boss checking in on the conductors en route
via
wireless teleconferencing. It might have seemed like a pipe dream
in 1936, but now it is commonplace. Not only do we now have live classroom broadcasts,
but millions of YouTube videos of instruction for performing...
 Once transistorized computers made desktop-sized
systems a reality, the sure eventuality of
humans being replaced by their electronic equivalents became a
popular theme of media pundits. News reports and "special features" on TV at the
same time scared citizens concerned for their jobs and assured them that by the
year 2000, humans wouldn't need to work anymore anyway because computers and robots
would be doing everything for them. The millennium crossover occurred a quarter
of a century and a half ago, and looking back it is true that computers and robots
have usurped a lot of what used to be done manually, but, as Mac presciently predicts
in this story...
 You have been warned not to believe anything
you see, hear, or read anymore, because of the ability of AI (artificial intelligence)
to alter and/or create just about anything. I offer in support of that thesis the
two photos shown here. The black and white image was scanned from a 1958 issue of
Popular Electronics magazine. I fed it exactly as shown to
Gemini 2.5 Flash, along with these simple instructions: "Please clean up
the 1958 magazine photo to remove noise, sharpen, and colorize it." You see the
result. The AI beast not only perfected the picture, but interpreted its content
(an amateur cyclotron, per the article) as a science laboratory scenario and added
the appropriate background. Yikes!
 Writing about "outdated" methods of radio-based
facsimile machine implementation in 1934 seems a bit incredible considering how
relatively new both technologies were at the time. Nevertheless, Radio-Craft
magazine editor Hugo Gernsback reported on the new era of
fax machines that were on display at the 1933 World's Fair in
Chicago. Of course fax machines of that time were not exactly desktop models that
could be located in a corner of your office or cubicle (not that cubicles were common).
If you substitute transistors for vacuum tubes, stepper motors for simple DC motors
and solenoids, and solid state lasers and LEDs for incandescent light sources, the
fundamentals have not...
 "It's not too early to gear up and get ready
for ARRL
Field Day! Field Day 2026 takes place June 27 – 28 and will bring together more
than 30,000 amateur radio operators for one of the most popular on-the-air events
in the US and Canada. This year's Field Day theme is 'Amateur Radio: A National
Resource.' Combined with the ARRL Year of the Club, it provides the perfect opportunity
for radio clubs to set up stations in public places to demonstrate ham radio's science,
skill, and service to our communities and our nation. All of the information you
need to get started..."
 New York City has forever, it seems, been
the place to be for street vending. A famously large pedestrian populace creates
an ideal venue for hacking goods of all sorts to passers-by. A phenomenon in radio
was created in the early 1930s with the rapid advances in technology and high volume
manufacturing techniques, coupled with increasingly efficient transportation of
goods on interconnecting roadways and delivery trucks. The photos included in this
Radio-Craft magazine story illustrate the level of enthusiasm by the public for
radio. A plethora of
replacement components for repairing malfunctioning sets and for
scratch-built sets at fantastically low prices helped fuel the fire. An offer of
"aluminum chassis" with pre-punched and drilled holes was really surprising not
because of the holes, but for...
 This week's
Wireless Engineering crossword puzzle contains the usual collection of science,
math, and engineering terms. Also included are a couple topics that have been in
the technical news headlines lately and the names of two new companies advertising
on RF Cafe. As always, this crossword contains no names of politicians, mountain
ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort unless it/he/she
is related to this puzzle's technology theme (e.g., Reginald Denny or the Tunguska
event in Siberia). The technically inclined cruciverbalists amongst...
 Once again, the undaunted, indefatigable
husband of "friend-wife" - maybe even the alter ego of story-teller and artist Carl
Kohler - embarks on another
grand and glorious electromechanical project, always meeting with near - but
never total - success. This time around, the subject of his passion is a giant radio-controlled
model cruiser. In the 1950s and 1960s, the great size of such a boat was perfect
for the great sizes of model engines and model R/C systems. Vacuum tubes and rather
large, leaded resistors and capacitors comprised the electronics of both transmitters
and receivers, and at least two batteries were required for power...
 While working on vacuum tube based USAF
air traffic control radar and radio systems, and having seen many tube television
and radio sets I never recall seeing one of these form-fitting
metal shields. All the ones I've seen are simple cylinders that
slide over the tube and either twist into a receiving rim slot or they have spring
metal fingers that grab the glass envelope. As you might guess, utilizing a metal
shield around a tube for anything other than a low frequency application like an
audio amplifier or poser supply requires circuit design that takes into account
the capacitive effects of the large metal plates...
 "Venus
is often described as Earth's twin, but that comparison quickly falls apart at the
surface. With temperatures hot enough to melt lead and pressures that rival the
deep ocean, Venus's harsh environment has required NASA and other space agencies
to orbit the planet, studying it remotely while sustained surface exploration has
remained elusive. If NASA intends to deploy landers capable of operating for days
or even weeks on Venus, it must rely on a fundamentally different class of sensing
and control systems. Exploration would require
high-temperature ceramic sensors built from wide-bandgap materials and advanced
structural ceramics..."
 As with so many topics, the basics of topics
like
harmonic distortion (and other forms of distortion) in an amplifier circuit
has not changed much - if at all - over the decades. Test equipment and circuits
being measured get more advanced, but, especially if you are new to the concept,
articles like this one on audio-frequency distortion from a 1941 edition of
Radio-Craft magazine are as useful today as it was when it was written. When
studying, in particular, harmonic distortion, having a knowledge of the Fourier
series for common waveforms like triangle waves, sawtooth waves, square waves, and
even a semi-circle- shaped wave is especially enlightening since it explains a lot
of waveform shapes where harmonics are present...
 A
vertical antenna can have a significant advantage over a horizontal
antenna from a maintenance perspective, since, depending on how high the antenna
is mounted off the ground, the "business end" where electrical connections are made
are more accessible. The configuration shown here would be difficult to implement
if a mast rotator is to be used because of the stabilizing guy wires on the lower
frame. Although it should be possible to achieve the necessary rigidity without
guys by using an aluminum or fiberglass tubing frame rather than wood, preventing
weathervaning in strong winds could prove difficult. A nifty feature of this "reversible
beam" antenna is that reciprocal directivity is implemented simply by swapping out
a short...
 A 1958 report in the Russian journal Radio
detailed early scientific findings from Sputnik I and II, marking a significant
advancement in space-based electronics. Analysis of Sputnik I's radio transmissions
revealed
complex propagation patterns, including refraction and reflection off the ionosphere's
F2 layer, which allowed signals to travel far beyond direct visibility and occasionally
produce a round-the-world echo. These observations provided researchers with critical
data regarding how radio waves behave in relation to atmospheric layers and satellite
positioning. Furthermore, the article discussed findings from Sputnik II concerning
solar radiation intensity beyond the earth’s atmosphere. The researchers utilized
actinometry - the science of measuring electromagnetic radiation, particularly solar
radiation...
 As
I have written in a couple articles recently, there was a huge push in the mid 1930s
to adopt the revolutionary new
metal-encased vacuum tubes over established glass-encased tubes.
Today, interest in vacuum tube amplifiers is building among audio enthusiasts both
from a nostalgic perspective and from a long-perpetuated belief that sound from
vacuum tube circuits have a distinctively richer quality than that of solid state
devices. I post this stuff for the benefit of those who otherwise might not be able
to find the information otherwise. Your patience indulgence is appreciated...
 "In the fictional nation of Beryllia, the
2026 World Chalice Games were set to begin as the country faced an unrelenting heat
wave. The grid, already under strain from the circumstances, was dealt a further
blow when a coordinated set of attacks including vandalism, drone, and ballistic
attacks by an adversary, Crimsonia,
crippled the
grid's physical infrastructure. This scenario, inspired by the upcoming 2026
World Cup and the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, was an exercise in studying
how utilities can prevent and mitigate, among other dangers, physical attacks on
power grids..."
 Werbel Microwave began as a consulting firm,
specializing in RF components design, with the ability to rapidly spin low volume
prototypes, and has quickly grown into a major designer and manufacturer. The
WMC-2-18-15dB-S is a directional coupler that covers 2-18 GHz with a flat
response over the band. Features 15 dB coupling response with broadband flat
coupling response, high directivity, and excellent return loss performance. Coupling
flatness ±0.35 dB typical. Insertion loss 0.8 dB typical. Directivity
17 dB typical. "No Worries with Werbel!"
 The saga continues... Please bear with me
even if you have no interest in the much-hyped (at the time) history of the advent
of
all-metal vacuum tubes in the mid 1930s. They were predicted to
make glass-encased tubes obsolete. It never happened. Believe it or not, there are
a few folks out there (like moi) who like reading about the history. Posting this
on the RF Cafe homepage helps the search engines find and register it faster. If
you also happen to care, then you might be interested to know this article was...
 World War II was the "necessity" that
elicited the "mother of invention" activity responsible for many huge leaps in technology
- not the least of which was electronic verbal and non-verbal communications. Along
with radio and radar, Loran had become a major means of ocean and air navigation.
A fair description of the operational details, including timing diagrams, is included
in the text. Loran-A, the original system as it came to be known, was fully decommissioned
in 1980, thereafter supplanted by
Loran-C. With the advent of GPS, Galileo, and Glonass navigation
systems and their low and their low equipment and installation costs...
 In this 1960 Popular Electronics
magazine adventure, teenage inventors / hobbyists Carl and Jerry explore the mechanics
of
Space Inertial Reference Equipment (SPIRE), a sophisticated navigation system
using gyroscopes, pendulums, and clocks to track position autonomously. Inspired
by a television program featuring Dr. Charles S. Draper, Jerry demonstrates how
a gyro-stabilized platform maintains spatial orientation regardless of external
movement. The duo soon applies this scientific knowledge to a practical mystery
when a local factory manager seeks their help in catching an employee stealing expensive
alternators. By placing a timer-controlled, battery-operated gyroscope inside a
bait package, they successfully trap the thief. As the culprit exits the factory,
the activated gyroscope creates unexpected torque during a turn, causing the lunch
box to move erratically and reveal the stolen goods. The story concludes with the
boys reclaiming their device, leaving the factory manager delighted by his opportunity
to experiment with the powerful "toy." This plot is a lot like "The Hot Hot Meter"
story.
 This week's
Microwave and RF Engineering crossword puzzle contains the usual
collection of science, math, and engineering terms. Each week for more than two
decades I have created a new technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words
(1,000s of them) from my custom-created lexicon related to engineering, science,
mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. You will never find among the words
names of politicians, mountain ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything
of the sort. You might, however, find someone or something in the otherwise excluded
list directly related to this puzzle's technology theme, such as Hedy Lamarr or
the Bikini Atoll, respectively. Avid cruciverbalists amongst us: the gauntlet has
been thrown down.
 "Researchers based in Singapore and Belgium
have reported record high peak power-added efficiency (PAE), of more than 60%, for
moderately scaled gallium nitride (GaN) on silicon (Si) high-electron-mobility transistors
(HEMTs) at 30 GHz operation. At the same time, the devices perform with state-of-the-art
noise figures (NFs) as low as 1.1 dB. 'These results suggest that moderate
scaling could deliver competitive
GaN-on-Si HEMT technology, when combined with optimized epitaxial structure
and process..."
 Designing resistive
impedance-matched signal splitting networks is nowadays mostly
done with the assistance of computer software. In fact, odds are pretty high that
the designer either has no idea what the formulas behind the "magic" are, or at
least it has been a very long time since working them with pencil and paper. There's
no shame in that, though, just as there is no reason to expect someone using a cellphone
must know the intricacies of the internal circuits or the network to which it is
connected. We've moved past that. For those of us who still appreciate a refresher
on the behind-the-scenes calculations being performed at lightning speed...
 During and immediately following World War II,
the "Monitoring Service" of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) relentlessly
listened to radio broadcasts from all over the world in order to be able to break
headline news and, if appropriate, pass strategic military information on to Allied
command centers (who were simultaneously doing their own monitoring). This article
tells of some of the more significant messages intercepted and how the facility
was a highly guarded secret in order to prevent sabotage and infiltration. At the
height of activity, 32 languages were being transcribed into English daily, consisting
of more than...
|
 • 6G Coming
- with
Connectivity & AI
• 5G
Americas Dissolves in 2026
• Taiwan
Exports to U.S. More Than China
• FCC Requires
FRN Contact Information Change Within 10 Days
• India Targets
1B 5G Subscribers
by 2031
• 6G Coming - with
Connectivity & AI
 The
RF Cafe Homepage Archive
is a comprehensive collection of every item appearing daily on this website since
2008 - and many from earlier years. Many thousands of pages of unique content have
been added since then.
 This
Radio
Theme Crossword Puzzle for June 13 has many words and clues related to RF, microwave,
and mm-wave engineering, optics, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical
subjects. Also, it contains at least five (5) instances of this puzzle's theme word.
As always, this crossword contains no names of politicians, mountain ranges, exotic
foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort unless it/he/she is related
to this puzzle's technology theme (e.g., Reginald Denny or the Tunguska event in
Siberia). The technically inclined cruciverbalists amongst us will appreciate the
effort. Enjoy!
 I haven't watched much television for the
last thirty years, so I don't know if having someone get electrocuted is still considered
as funny as it used to be. Maybe that went out with the Three Stooges. In the 1960s
and 70s, just about every Prime Time comedy show ran an episode where somebody's
tooth filling was picking up radio broadcasts. I particularly remember the Gilligan's
Island episode called "Hi-Fi
Gilligan" where he became an AM radio receiver when a jolt to the jaw affected
the filling in a molar (those AM signals travelled quite a distance to that "uncharted
desert isle"). These two
electronics-themed comics from 1968 Radio-Electronics magazine hits
on both of those themes...
 In 1945, when this article was published
in QST magazine, radar was still in its infancy. Engineers were already
aware of the need to shape pulse waveforms from experience with CW keying and the
need to mitigate the effects of "chirping." A perfectly rectangular pulse in the
time domain, as we learned in our signals and systems courses, creates a
sin (x)/x response in the frequency domain. The Fourier transform
shows that a perfectly square pulse in the time domain is the summation of an infinite
number of odd harmonics of the fundamental (1st harmonic). The first few harmonics
are audible to the CW copier as higher frequency "chirps." To reduce the annoyance
(and wasted transmitted energy), time constants were added to the leading and trailing
edges of the waveform to remove the higher frequencies, while leaving the pulse
shape sufficiently rectangular to achieve its goal. The same type issue applies
to radar pulses...
 "The Congress shall have Power … To promote
the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Tımes to Authors
and Inventors the exclusive
Right
to their respective Writings and Discoveries." - United States Constitution,
Article I, Section 8. Therein lies the authority for legislation and prosecution
of rights for virtually every human creation within the jurisdiction of the country.
Each nation has it own version, and international agreements help assure universal
protection of a creator's rights of ownership; e.g., the "Convention for the Protection
of Literary and Artistic Works" (aka the "Berne Convention") of 1886 and the World
Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). America has the U.S. Copyright Office.
Those of us involved in presenting information and referring to legally protected
works of others are, or should be, concerned with laws governing how such content
may be used...
 This letter submitted to Electronics
magazine by reader Fred Standish really should have been saved for the next
April issue. He writes concerning an attempt to mathematically describe the
three-port circular-to-rectangular waveguide transition for the pictured configuration.
If I remember correctly, the first time I saw that optical illusion was sometime
in the early 1970s. The drawing showed Alfred E. Neuman (the red-haired, freckled-faced
"Me Worry? guy from Mad magazine) attempting to don a pair of pants (a
triplet of pants in that case?) sewn to resemble the three-legged configuration
- known unofficially as the "Impossible Trident." I was in my early teens at the
time and though it was awfully clever. After doing a little research, I found that
the first instance of the Impossible Trident in Mad magazine was on the
cover of the March 1965 issue...
 RF Cafe visitor Bob D. sent me information
on this interesting device that allows owners of vintage
AM radios to receive
FM stations while using the original tuning dial to cover the entire 88-108 MHz
band. Monsieur David Winter, of France, is the designer and seller of this
FM Converter for Vintage Radios. Installation and calibration is not for the faint
of heart, since it involves tapping directly into the circuitry and disconnecting
some of the sections where the device inserts the signal into the audio frequency
(AF) section, totally bypassing the RF and IF sections. A direct connection to the
tuning capacitor is used to tune the module throughout the FM band, which is a primary
feature of scheme. However, it requires the capacitor to be disconnected from all
other circuitry to prevent normal voltages and impedances from adjacent connected
components from entering the integrated circuit (IC). Retaining the AM reception
(and possibly shortwave reception) function requires the installer to devise a custom
switching scheme. It uses the 6.3 VAC vacuum tube (valve) heater supply. In
older radios you need to be sure to locate a "real" ground (common) point to assure
the voltage is properly referenced. The price is €29.90 ($32.83), which is currently
the cost of 7-8 gallons of gasoline...
 Robert Balin, Popular Electronics magazine's
quizmeister, created this
CapaciQuiz for the February 1961 issue. Most of these are elementary, but think
carefully about the exact wording of Q4 before you answer. With Q8, believe the
better explanation is that for a purely capacitive circuit, current and voltage
are 90° out of phase, so when the sinewave voltage is at zero, the current is at
a maximum. Note that Q6 and Q10 are opposites (parallel vs. series capacitor combinations),
so if you have trouble reasoning one of the configurations, work on the other and
then you'll know both. Bon chance!...
 Burying any antenna in the ground seems like
a bad idea from radiated field pattern and efficiency perspectives. As determined
in a 1974 paper published by the National Bureau of Standards, most of the energy
from a buried dipole antenna that is not absorbed by the ground is radiated nearly
straight up (many studies of underground antennas can be found). Motivating the
NBS's burial study was a desire to conceal radio communications antennas in covert
operations. This short piece in a 1935 edition of Short Wave Craft reports
on a case Hams were experimenting with
buried antennas in order to avoid the expense and trouble of an overhead installation.
These days, Hams want to bury antennas for those same reasons AND to get around
restrictive neighborhood and town restrictions prohibiting certain antenna installations...
 Even in today's world with computing devices
everywhere sporting simulators and component calculating programs, there are still
times when having a good old fashioned
nomograph or chart handy can be very useful while in sitting at a bench selecting
component values for tweaking or troubleshooting a design. The advantage of such
visual aids is that they provide a big picture of what's happening as frequencies,
lengths, widths, core materials, etc. change - being able to see both the trees
and the forest, so to speak. When you are working in bands where the component physical
size is a significant portion of the wavelength, things get more complicated and
a combination of trial and error and calculations / simulations are needed. At the
IC design level, of course, you have no choice but to rely solely on your computer...
 When
this article appeared in Popular Electronics in 1955, Iraq was considered a staunch
ally of the United States and most Western countries, although not long thereafter
relations were strained when Communist-aligned forces gained control of the former
monarchy. As part of a plan to help Iraq modernize, English telecommunications company
Pye Limited built and commissioned a television broadcast station in the capital
city of Baghdad. As with any country when television was first introduced, Iraqi
citizens were overwhelmingly enthusiastic - to the extent that TV sets were banned
from being on in store display windows during major broadcasts because of the crowds
being drawn and the subsequent traffic blockages...
 In 1944 when this National Union Radio Company
ad appeared in Radio News magazine, the price of gold bullion was $35 US
per ounce, as established by the Bretton-Woods Agreement. Inflation remained near
zero until 1971 when President Nixon removed the U.S. treasury notes (dollars) from
the gold standard. Take a look at the inflation chart in the background of the RF
Cafe header (top of page) to see what has happened since then. Today's spot gold
bullion price is around $1800 per ounce - a factor of 51x higher. According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics' Inflation Calculator, $35 in 1944 had the equivalent
purchasing power of $538 today - a factor of 15x. That means the inflation-adjusted
price of gold is about 3x what it was when National Union decided to use it to
plate the wire control grid of its high power vacuum tubes in order to minimize
performance-degrading grid emissions. Because relatively little gold would have
been used...
 It was 1958, over the Taiwan Strait, when
the first Sidewinder air-to-air missile flew up the tailpipe of a MIG-17 Fresco
after being launched by an F-104 Starfighter. The age of
offensive infrared (IR) warfare had begun. It is amazing that the detection
and guidance system for the Sidewinder was built largely from discrete components,
without the advantage of large scale integration. IR night vision devices were actually
used by the military as early as WWII with the renowned Snooperscope (handheld)
and the Sniperscope (mounted to a carbine rifle). Both required an infrared light
source to illuminate the target. Today's night vision goggles and scopes are sensitive
enough to be totally passive. This "Infrared" article from the February 1961 issue
of Popular Electronics magazine talks about early developments in infrared
technology. Corny-looking prototypes of IR wireless phones are shown, but obviously...
 It's probably a safe bet that most people,
even at the
dawn of color television, knew of the competition which occurred for the adoption
of three different methods of implementation. Two of them - line-sequential by Color
Television, Inc. (CTI), and dot-sequential by Radio Corporation of America (RCA)
- were fully electronic while the third system by the Columbia Broadcast System
(CBS) used a kludge of a spinning color wheel placed in front of a black and white
display. The CBS field-sequential design used a synchronization component of the
composite transmitted signal to position the correct color screen (red, yellow,
or blue) in front of the screen as the electron gun scanned the CRT - analogous
to how World War I airplane machine guns were synchronized with the engine
to fire between propeller blades. Of course an out-of-synch scenario in the color
wheel was not as serious as with the machine gun. The worst that could happen with
the TV is a false color picture whereas with the machine gun your biplane instantly
became a glider. Although I poke some fun at the CBS solution...
 Since I am currently planning a loudspeaker configuration
to replace the original speaker in my 1941 Crosley 03CB floor model AM / shortwave radio
set, this article made for a good refresh on
audio frequency crossover networks. A very nice set of design charts is provided.
Of course today there is no need to design and build your own since commercial units
are very good and cost less than what I could build myself. Many moons ago while serving
in the USAF at Robins AFB, Georgia, I did actually build my own crossover circuit for
use in custom speaker cabinets I built in the base woodshop. The speaker that came in
the Crosley has a 12" cone, which is still in good condition, but it uses an electromagnetic
voice coil rather than a permanent magnet like modern speakers use...
 Electrical noise problems in automotive environments
is almost never a problem now that most forms of communications therein are fundamentally
immune to ignition and even computer interference. We relics who still listen to
AM radio still sometimes suffer noise from lightning static, extreme arcing from
electric service connections, and, yes, even from
ignition sources. In fact, occasionally while listening to AM
radio in my 2011 Jeep Patriot I will detect a whine that is proportional to engine
speed. It is not annoying enough to warrant going to the trouble of chasing down
and mitigating the source; I can live with it. This 1966 Popular Electronics
magazine
article presents a very thorough treatise on ignition noise causes and cures. The
techniques are still applicable to modern vehicles...
 Stan
Goldberg is a familiar name to comic book aficionados for his artistry in Spider
Man, the Incredible Hulk, and the Archie series. QST magazine had him listed
in the "Silent Keys" column in the November 2014 issue because he passed away in
August. A Silent Key, in Hamdom, is usually a title reserved for a deceased licensed
operator (the 'key' reference being a Morse code key), but a search of the Internet
and the FCC license database web page did not turn up a call sign for him. Unless
his record has been dropped from the database, Mr. Goldberg might never have actually
been a Ham, but earned the Silent Key acknowledgement because of his involvement
in a 1986 special edition comic book titled "Archie's Ham Radio Adventure."
It was quite an extensive story that involved all the familiar Archie characters,
and even had a section addressed to parents encouraging them to promote both their
kids' and their own interest in amateur radio as an educational and character building
tool...
 The March 1944 issue of Radio-Craft
magazine published an article entitled, "Magnetic
Current - Discovery of the Age?," which reported on Austrian physicist Dr. Felix
Ehrenhaft's announcement that he had discovered "magnetic charges," aka magnetic
monopoles. The breathtaking news set the physics world astir as believers and non-believers
quickly sought to prove or disprove, respectively, his claim. A maxim in science
is that the most effective way to validate a theory or claim of discovery is to
try, but fail, to invalidate it. We have seen time and again, even to this day,
where all attempts to show Einstein's Theory of General Relativity to be wrong have
ultimately only further qualified it. Radio-Craft publisher Hugo Gernsback
was one of the first to glom on to the magnetic current phenomenon and exposited
gloriously about it in the same month's editorial column...
 Unless otherwise annotated, U.S. Government
publications are deemed to be in the public domain for American citizens. Since
government websites are famous for moving pages around and/or eliminating them entirely,
I went ahead and captured this copy of the
wire-wrapping workmanship standards as defined by NASA. In fact, many
moons ago when working as an electronics technician at the Westinghouse Oceanic
Division in Annapolis, MD, I attended a week-long class learning to perform
soldering, wire-wrapping, and PCB rework per NASA standards. My work involved a
lot of building electronic and mechanical assemblies for DoD and aerospace
systems, and U.S. Navy inspectors were on-site to perform inspections on
everything I built... |
