Here we are with another set of three "What's
Your EQ?" circuit challenges, these from the February 1962 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine. As usual, those challenges provided by Jack Darr are the purview of television
servicemen of the era. The photo shown of the problematic CRT display looks like
a chest x-ray or maybe hieroglyphics in the dark corner of a cave, but evidently
the artifacts are readily identifiable to an initiated few. The Forbidden Current
Path circuit answer is not what I thought it would be. I maintain that whether my
answer or the designer's answer is correct depends on the physical...
"A new
world record
in wireless transmission, promising faster and more reliable wireless communications,
has been set by researchers from UCL. The team successfully sent data over the air
at a speed of 938 Gb/s over a record frequency range of 5–150 GHz. This speed
is up to 9,380 times faster than the best average 5G download speed in the UK, which
is currently 100 Mb/s or over. The total bandwidth of 145 GHz is more
than five times higher than the previous wireless transmission world record. Typically,
wireless networks transmit information using radio waves over a narrow range of
frequencies..."
Sputnik refers to the first series of satellites
launched by the Soviet Union. The word "Sputnik" means "satellite" in Russian. The
launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957, marked a monumental moment in human history,
heralding the dawn of the Space Age and sparking a fierce technological competition
known as the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union. This satellite,
the world's first artificial one, orbited Earth at an altitude of roughly 215 to
939 kilometers and broadcast a radio signal that astonished the world, particularly
in the United States, where it spurred rapid advancements in aerospace and scientific
research. The successful launch of Sputnik was an achievement that was years in
the making, involving a combination of visionary planning, political motives, and
intensive engineering by some of the Soviet Union's top scientists.
Blog: Air Quality Measurements with Particle Counters
Transcat | Axiom Test Equipment, an electronic test equipment rental and sales company has published a new blog post entitled "Provide Essential Air
Quality Measurements with These Particle Counters" that covers how particle
counters can provide essential measurement capabilities that can help avoid
contamination and support high manufacturing yields. These measurement tools can
detect and measure microscopic particles suspended in air that can contaminate
the most carefully planned manufacturing lines. Air particle counters can be
designed for various...
In 1958, most people were not accustomed
to seeing the now-familiar maps plotting
sinusoidal
courses of satellites across the face of the earth. It had only been in October
of the previous year that any object other than the moon was in orbit around our
home planet - that was U.S.S.R.'s Sputnik. Just as people of all ages and all backgrounds
enthusiastically joined in the newfangled phenomenon of aeroplanes after the Wright
Brothers flew their fragile craft at Kitty Hawk, electronics communications and
scientists worldwide hopped aboard the satellite train. This article from a 1958
issue of Radio & TV News magazine provided insight into the construction
and flight characteristics...
LadyBug Technologies was founded in 2004
by two microwave engineers with a passion for quality microwave test instrumentation.
Our employees offer many years experience in the design and manufacture of the worlds
best vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, power meters and associated components.
The management team has additional experience in optical power testing, military
radar and a variety of programming environments including LabVIEW, VEE and other
languages often used in programmatic systems. Extensive experience in a broad spectrum
of demanding measurement applications. You can be assured that our Power Sensors
are designed, built, tested and calibrated without compromise.
What were some of the
top issues of the radio and television industry half a century ago? In a lot
of respects, the same things that concern it today. A ready supply of service technicians
was a concern that was taken seriously by the Electronics Industry Association (EIA).
While there are not many local repair shops for electronics products nowadays, there
is still a huge demand to techs who are willing and able to do the hard work of
keeping the world's communication infrastructure operational - climbing towers,
repairing cell equipment. Now, as then, good pay, job security, benefits, and respect
for the job being done were at the top of...
In a parallel to the traditional test setup
of signal generation and signal acquisition, RIGOL Technologies announced today
the latest additions to its portfolio of
performance measurement equipment with the introduction of the DG5000 Pro Series
Generators and DHO/MHO5000 Series Oscilloscopes. The DHO/MHO5000 Series bring next-level
performance to RIGOL's respected line of high-resolution oscilloscopes, while the
DG5000 Pro generators do the same for the company's capable Pro Series arbitrary
waveform generators...
When selecting articles for posting here
on RF Cafe, I like to include ones that are directed toward newcomers to the field
of electronics as well as for seasoned veterans. This piece from a 1958 issue of
Radio & TV News magazine entitled "Basic Electronic Counting," is a
prime example in that it introduces the concept of binary numbers. We've all been
there at some point in our careers. A big difference between now and when this article
appeared is that in 1958, almost nobody was familiar to binary numbers, and fuggetabout
[sic] octal and hexadecimal. Only those relatively few people designing and working
with multimillion dollar, vacuum tube-based digital computers installed in universities,
megacorporations, and government research facilities had ever dealt with digital
numbers. The earliest example of powers of two I remember was back in junior high
school. It had to do with a
"Every invention begins with a problem -
and the creative act of seeing a problem where others might just see unchangeable
reality. For one 5-year-old, the problem was simple: She liked to have her tummy
rubbed as she fell asleep. But her mom, exhausted from working two jobs, often fell
asleep herself while putting her daughter to bed. 'So [the girl] invented a teddy
bear that would rub her belly for her,' explains Stephanie Couch, executive director
of the Lemelson MIT Program. Its mission is to nurture the
next generation of inventors
and entrepreneurs. Anyone can learn to be an inventor, Couch says, given the right
resources and encouragement. 'Invention doesn't come from some innate genius, it's
not something that only really..."
Mechanical filters of the type described
in this 1969 Electronics World magazine article are yet another example
of the genius of some people. They are actually a form of electromechanical device
in that the applied electrical signals are first converted into mechanical signals,
followed by resonant mechanical elements that discriminate according to frequency,
and finally a conversion back to an electrical signal is made. It is fundamentally
the same principal as a crystal, SAW, or BAW filter, albeit each with distinctly
different methods and topologies. Mr. Donovan Southworth, of Collins Radio, presents
the basics of mechanical filters in this brief write-up...
LadyBug Technologies was founded in 2004
by two microwave engineers with a passion for quality microwave test instrumentation.
Our employees offer many years experience in the design and manufacture of the worlds
best vector network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, power meters and associated components.
The management team has additional experience in optical power testing, military
radar and a variety of programming environments including LabVIEW, VEE and other
languages often used in programmatic systems. Extensive experience in a broad spectrum
of demanding measurement applications. You can be assured that our Power Sensors
are designed, built, tested and calibrated without compromise.
Attempts at making an
electronically printed facsimile (fax) of an original document at a location
distant from the source have been around for quite a while. As mentioned by
Radio-Electronics magazine editor Hugo Gernsback in this article, Samuel Morse
had a crude working device for printing messages on paper even before his eponymously
named code of dots and dashes became famous in 1837. A couple decades earlier, a
fellow named John Redman Coxe, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, devised a method of
electronically printing images and text on paper using a conductive solution and
a direct current pile (aka battery). Dr. Coxe, a physician, is not a well-known
figure in the electronics world, but in his day...
"Researchers have discovered how the 'edge
of chaos' can help electronic chips overcome signal losses, making chips simpler
and more efficient. By using a metallic wire on a semi-stable material, this method
allows for long metal lines to act like superconductors and amplify signals, potentially
transforming chip design by eliminating the need for transistor amplifiers and reducing
power usage. A stubbed toe immediately sends pain signals to the brain through several
meters of axons, which are composed of highly resistive fleshy material. These axons
operate using a principle known as the 'edge of chaos,' or semi-stability, enabling
the swift and precise transmission of information..."
The January 1969 issue of Electronics
World magazine published an extensive list of
Japanese company trade names and their addresses. Many of them went out of business
or were bought by other corporations long ago, as occurs in all countries. "Aiwa"
is listed twice, but that might have been a legitimate duplication due to separate
locations (BTW, I owned an Aiwa stereo at one time). My first "real" cassette tape
deck was made by TEAC (founded in 1953 as the Tokyo Electro Acoustic Company) and
my first "real" stereo receiver was made by Sansui. I remember the line in "Back
to the Future 3" where Doc Brown, having time-travelled from 1955, makes a
disparaging remark about a circuit in the DeLorean failing because of it being labeled
"Made in Japan." Marty counters...
• ARRL Defends
902-928 MHz Amateur Radio Band
• FCC's
Auto Safety Spectrum Rules
• $5M in U.S.
Chips Act Money to Metrology Projects
• U.S. State Department Approves
Surveillance Radar System Sale to Romania
•
5G Americas ITU IMT-2030 Vision for 6G White Paper
John Redman Coxe was a prominent American
physician, scientist, and innovator born on September 20, 1773, in Philadelphia.
Coxe's intellect and curiosity drove him toward an illustrious career in both medicine
and early scientific exploration, which included experimentation in electrochemistry.
He graduated with a degree in medicine in 1794, setting the course for his lifelong
journey into medicine and early scientific innovation. Coxe broadened his approach
to medicine and science, inspiring him to explore the convergence of scientific
methods and practical applications. John Redman Coxe is most remembered not only
for his contributions to medicine but also for his interest in experimental physics,
particularly in the field of electrochemistry...
TotalTemp Technologies has more than 40
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Thermal Platforms are
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how they can help your project.
When I saw this 1966 Radio-Electronics
magazine article entitled, "Vibration
and Shock - Nature's Wrecking Crew," for some reason the first thing I thought
of was "The Wrecking Crew," that anonymously played the music for a huge number
of popular singers - mostly those without prominent bands of their own during the
1960s and 1970s rock-and-roll era. ...but I digress. My introduction to the potential
deleterious effects of vibration on electronics was in the 1970s, with airborne
receivers and servos in my radio controlled model airplanes. Even though they were
transistorized, vibration from glow fuel engines could wreak havoc with potentiometers
in servos and solder joints everywhere, including battery packs. I remember seeing
the control surfaces jitter...
You don't see jobs advertisements like this
anymore. Here is an ad that appeared in the the July 1944 edition of QST
(the American Radio Relay League's, ARRL's, monthly magazine), placed by Raytheon
Manufacturing Company (now just Raytheon Company), looking for
vacuum tube design, test, and processing engineers. Licensed amateur radio operators
were in high demand during the war years because of their knowledge and enthusiasm
for electronics and wireless communications. I hope you didn't come to this page
hoping to really find a tube designer job available. Of course, there are still
vacuum tubes being designed for TWTs and magnetrons, but those are few and far between...
The "carborundum"
signal detector, an innovative device developed by engineer General H. H. C. Dunwoody
in the early 20th century, represents a significant advancement in radio technology,
particularly in the context of crystal detectors used for receiving radio signals.
This device utilized the unique properties of silicon carbide, also known as carborundum,
which was synthesized in the late 19th century by Edward Goodrich Acheson. The connection
between Dunwoody and the material lies in the application of carborundum as a semiconductor
in radio signal detection. The operational theory of the carborundum signal detector
is rooted in its ability to rectify alternating current (AC) signals. When radio
waves, which are essentially electromagnetic waves...
"Researchers have created a cutting-edge
structure by placing a very thin layer of a special insulating material between
two magnetic layers. This new combination acts as a quantum anomalous Hall insulator,
significantly broadening its potential use in developing ultra-efficient electronics
and innovative solar technology. A Monash University-led research team has found
that a structure featuring an ultra-thin topological insulator, sandwiched between
two 2D ferromagnetic insulators, transforms into a large-bandgap quantum anomalous
Hall insulator. This heterostructure opens the door to ultra-low energy electronics
and even topological photovoltaics..."
This is another of a series of articles
on
printed circuit boards (PCBs) that appeared in the October 1969 issue of Electronics
World magazine, reporting on the latest and greatest advances in printed circuit
board technology. Already in production were rigid multi-layer laminates, flexible
plastic laminates, and special-purpose laminates for hazardous duty applications.
Author Norman Skow does not mention how many layers were routinely accomplished
at the time. Plated-through holes were a relatively recent thing for high volume
manufacturing. Of course population of PCB components was still a completely manual
procedure since pick-and-place machines were still a couple decades away...
This "Beyond
the Transistor" article by Hugo Gernsback, which was printed in a 1963 issue
of Radio-Electronics magazine, had as its subject not the transistor in general,
but specifically its potential use as a low noise, high sensitivity radio frequency
signal detector. Mr. Gernsback does a useful historical review of signal detectors,
beginning with Heinrich Hertz's radio detector in 1888, then progressing through
Edouard Branly's 1892 coherer, Gustave-Auguste Ferrie's and Reginald Fessenden's
electrolytic detector of 1903, then Greenleaf Pickard's crystal detector in 1906.
Lee de Forest's early work on vacuum tubes was directed toward a signal detector,
and ultimately resulted in his Audion amplifier. In 1948, Bell Laboratories' Shockley,
Brattain and Bardeen...
"Researchers have developed a groundbreaking
method to create more compact and energy-efficient computing devices using
magnonic circuits. By utilizing alternating currents to generate and steer spin
waves in synthetic ferrimagnetic vortex pairs, this new approach promises significant
advancements over traditional CMOS technology, potentially leading to the next generation
of computing systems. The central processing units (CPUs) in our laptops, desktops,
and phones rely on billions of transistors built with CMOS technology. As the demand
to shrink these devices..."
|
In the 1930s, electricity and electronics
were mysteries to most of the population. The concepts were relatively new and few
had a firm grasp on the technology. That reality was exploited by Hugo Gernsback
during the
1934 Electrical Exposition to challenge attendees to discover how the radio
receiver sitting on the top of an empty, clear glass case was being powered. It
was a clever ruse that reportedly stumped most people. The secret is revealed here
in this 1934 issue of his Radio-Craft magazine. BTW, my guess is that an
even smaller proportion of our current citizens would be able to figure it out,
or for that matter even realize that maybe there should be a power source of some
sort...
Often I have said I would like to have been
born three decades earlier to have lived during the
golden era of radio and TV, and owned a local service shop. Having arrived on
Earth in 1958, by the time I was old enough to consider electronic servicing as
a career, the industry was in full transition mode to solid state electronics. I
remember the TV repair guy working in our living room with tools and test equipment
spread out on the floor. Growing up in a lower middle class (or maybe it was an
upper lower class) household, our television and radios (both in the house and in
the old 6-cylinder Rambler) used vacuum tubes until sometime in the 1970s. Transistorized
stuff was for the rich folk in the neighborhood over. Upon enlisting in the USAF
in 1978, the air traffic control radar I worked on used vacuum tubes for the primary
airport surveillance (ASR) radar and for the precision approach radar (PAR)...
Our two intrepid techno-sleuths,
Carl Anderson and Jerry Bishop, are in college by now, but that does not keep
them from applying their well-honed mystery solving skills to hometown situations
while on spring break. The boys invoke the scientific method of Mr. R.R. Dibble,
a New Zealand scientist, to help prove to county commissioners that a certain part
of their critical infrastructure was in need of repair. An nth-generation farmer's
observation was not proof enough, so indisputable empirical data would be needed.
Real-life inventors and company's unique instruments are often incorporated into
the Carl & Jerry series by John T. Frye that ran for many years in Popular
Electronics...
Listen to the
Podcast! Just in time for Halloween, John T. Frye's teenage sleuths
Carl & Jerry unexpectedly recorded a late-night conversation between two
men where they plot how to dispose of the "body" when death occurred as a result
of prolonged choking. Employing their trademark technical prowess and scheming ability,
the pair sets a trap for the perpetrators and dutifully summon the authorities as
they complete their nefarious act of the night before. Halloween comes into play
because the recordings were made for use in creating sound effects during the reading
of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Cask of Amontillado." This
story, which appeared in a 1955 issue of Popular Electronics magazine,
is a little dark compared to a typical story...
Just to remind you that patent laws are continually
being monkeyed with by lawmakers and challenged in court by litigants, here is a news
item from a 1965 issue of Electronics magazine reporting on a Supreme Court
case brought by Hazeltine Research regarding their
patent application for a microwave switch. Evidently over time the Supreme
Court had been raising the bar on patent filings by requiring a higher degree of
uniqueness for new inventions. The 1952 U.S. Patent Act, enacted by the U.S.
Congress, simplified the terms of claims for new patents, thus making them
easier to obtain, but according to critics, making new patents less valuable in
the process. Now (in 1965), the Supreme court was moving itself back to ward the
pre-1952 criteria. Judicial activism, anyone...
OK, class, put your books away and take out
a pencil. Spread your chairs out because we're going to have a short test today.
A collective sigh permeates the room. Remember those days? I still have nightmares
over those moments, and they were decades ago for me. At least this "Electronic
Noise Quiz" from the August 1962 edition of Popular Electronics
won't affect your GPA. Sometimes PE's quiz illustrations are kind of hard to
interpret, but this one does a pretty good job (except item 'E', but I'm not
telling what it is since nobody helped me). You will need a fairly diverse
background in consumer type electronics to do well, and having a few gray hairs
will probably help as well. Good luck. BTW, my score was a somewhat embarrassing
80%...
Do you think any tool company would publish
an advertisement like this in today's hypersensitive environment? When Weller ran
the ad shown below in the May 1952 issue of Radio & Television News
magazine, nobody anywhere could have conceived of a world six decades later where
the mere sight or mention of a gun would send snowflake types running for the nearest
safe space (which, sadly, has a special symbol
a la a nuclear fallout
shelter). It is a little surprising that Weller still markets the tool as a soldering
gun rather than, say a heavy-duty, finger-operated, palm-conforming, graspable soldering
implement ;-( Does anyone know whether soldering guns are allowed in
schools these days? Zero Tolerance policies would require...
Good
power supply design has always been key to good system function.
As with so many other topics in electronics, the basics of power supply design are
the same now as they were in 1945 when this article appeared in Radio-Craft
magazine. We now have transistors rather than vacuum tubes, but otherwise issues
of voltage regulation, current supply, ripple, and power dissipation remain. Off-the-shelf
power supplies have been and are available where engineers have designed generic
or special purpose units with a set of specifications which a system designer uses
to integrate them into their products. Many times, though, it is necessary or preferred
to have the power supply on the same circuit board or in the same enclosure as the
functional part of the product, so it is up to the designer to do it all...
Author Lawrence Sharpe pointed in 1955
in this Radio & Television News article the potential for confusion
when reading columns and advertisements written by our brothers from Across the
Pond when they appeared in American electronics magazines. Most of us are familiar
with valve vs vacuum tube, bonnet vs. hood (car), football vs. soccer, fag vs. cigarette,
holiday vs. vacation, nappy vs. diaper, petrol vs. gasoline, torch vs. flashlight,
flat vs. apartment. There are many more, but those come to mind. Read through this
short list of purely electronics terms and learn that
"earthed" is the same as our "grounded." One thing that surprised me was how
the Brits had already adopted pico (e.g. pF) for the numerical unit of 10-12
while we were still using micromicro (10-6 x 10-6 = 10-12,
e.g., μμF). Note how I omitted a comma...
I have five operational radios and speakers
spread around my house (912 ft2, BTW) and in the basement. Only
one of them is newer than 20 years old and the others are circa 1978 or earlier.
AM or FM over-the-air radio is playing all day (when the el cheapo BSR turntable
isn't spinning LP and 45 vinyl). In a couple instances I
feed a stereo output into a mono speaker. With truly stereo-separated audio,
listening to just the right (R) or left (L) channel does not do an adequate job
of replicating the broadcast since often, particularly in music, the voice tends
to favor one or the other of R or L. Simply tying the right and left channels together
does not do the job because the low impedance of the speakers - typically 4 Ω
or 8 Ω - causes noticeable distortion when doing so. The only way to achieve
good sound is to use a power combiner that presents the proper impedance to each
component...
Certain things about John T. Frye are very
apparent to the many of you familiar with techno-dramas - "Carl & Jerry" and
"Mac's
Service Shop" - and his many magazine articles on topics related to
electronics and amateur radio: Mr. Frye has a good imagination, he is a good
story teller, and he has a very deep knowledge of electronics theory,
troubleshooting, repair, and practical operation. One particular aspect about
him you might not know is that he spent most of his life in a wheelchair, as the
result of polio. Born in 1910, John could not benefit from the polio vaccine
invented by Dr. Jonas Salk in 1955. That was a mere three years before I was
born. We are fortunate to live in these times when so much amazing medical
research is happening to prevent, treat, and cure diseases, and while great
advances have been made...
Every once in a while an RF Cafe visitor
writes to let me know that he or she found one of the vintage electronics magazine
articles I post regularly useful. It helps to validate my efforts, which is critical
for motivation to continue. A couple days ago Mr. Dave Jones (N1UAV), sent
me a note about the stacked television antenna project he undertook after finding
the "How
to Stack TV Antennas to Increase Signal Strength and to Reduce Ghosts" article
from the November 1965 issue of Popular Electronics magazine. His location
about 90 miles outside of Nashville, TN, is a challenge for trying to receive a
good signal from a television station from both an attenuation and multipath signal
degradation perspective. Dave began with a single antenna, but was not happy with
the performance. The results of adding the second antenna is amazing ...
Before the current generation began destroying
its hearing with smartphone earbuds, their parents and grandparents (that includes
mine) destroyed our hearing with ridiculously
powerful loudspeakers, often in boom boxes perched on shoulders
right next to the ears (not me). The "concert hall" - or concert auditorium - experience
has been long sought-after since recorded music has been available, which has only
been about a century. As evidenced by the sudden increase in articles and advertisements
in my growing collection of vintage electronics magazines, the early and mid 1950s
saw a sudden swell of articles promoting the equally swelling supply of high fidelity
(hi-fi) recording and playback equipment hitting the markets. Subjects ranging from
homebuilt projects to reports of top end commercially products filled the pages
each month. Television saw the same treatment in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
All, of course, relied on vacuum tubes - with just enough relatively expensive semiconductors...
The
evolution of communications has been well documented both after
the fact and necessarily before the fact based on the vision and determination of
individuals and corporations. From grunts, hand and facial signals, and crude sketchings
on cave walls to spoken and written languages. From couriers on foot and horseback,
smoke signals, and light signals to wired telegraph and telephone. From wireless
telegraph and telephone to television and the Internet, advancement has been continual
both in large steps between the aforementioned fundamental communications venues
to incremental advancements in technologies - analog to digital, vacuum tubes to
semiconductors, simplex to multiplex, ever increasing access to regions of the electromagnetic
spectrum from DC to light. This 1945 advertisement by RCA expounding the benefits
of its recently implemented transcontinental microwave relay system was life changing
at the time, but two decades later those tower networks would be supplemented and
nearly replaced by satellite relay...
This is a great example of how Popular
Electronics and John T. Frye used the "Carl &
Jerry" series to teach some basic electronics design principles through story
telling. The same is true with his long-running "Mac's Service Shop" series of techno-dramas.
In this adventure, the the two teenagers decide to build a tachometer from schematics
they found in a magazine. They debate amongst themselves how the circuits works,
the best way to assemble the circuit, component selection, vibration-tolerant mounting,
and how to properly calibrate the tach to accurately display engine revolutions
per minute (RPM). Being set in 1960, this is one of the first appearances of transistors
in circuits rather than vacuum tubes. Transistors were still very mysterious - and
even detested - by many electronics hobbyists and professionals, so pieces like
this...
Early investigations into RF signal
atmospheric "ducting" was reported in this 1956-era article in Popular Electronics.
Ducting effects were first noticed during World War II when Nazi broadcasts
from occupied Paris were received occasionally in London. Scientists discovered
that a small change in the humidity of the air near the surface has the effect of
trapping radio waves, a trapping process dubbed "ducting." These waves are conducted
as if they were inside of a metallic waveguide. Research by the U.S. Army Signal
Corps determined a sudden temperature rise at around 50 to 200 feet above the surface
appears to have the strongest effect...
Listen to
the Podcast! Just in time for Halloween, John
T. Frye's teenage sleuths
Carl & Jerry unexpectedly recorded a late-night conversation between two men
where they plot how to dispose of the "body" when death occurred as a result of
prolonged choking. Employing their trademark technical prowess and scheming
ability, the pair sets a trap for the perpetrators and dutifully summon the
authorities as they complete their nefarious act of the night before. Halloween
comes into play because the recordings were made for use in creating sound
effects during the reading of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The
Cask of Amontillado." This story, which appeared in a 1955 issue of Popular
Electronics magazine, is a little dark compared to a typical story...
If you look through the hundreds of
technology-themed comics that appeared various electronics
magazines, many deal with the trials and tribulations of television repair and
service. That is because in the introductory era of TVs, people were,
understandably, infatuated with being able to not just hear but see what was
happening in the broadcast. Radios and phonographs got a lot of coverage as
well. Storylines involving a guy on the roof installing or repairing an antenna
were considered particularly funny, especially if it depicted someone hanging
precariously from a lead-in cable or a ladder rung. This comic addresses the
all-too-common situation where sometimes a better picture was obtained using a
makeshift antenna than with a bona fide, professionally designed antenna...
Do you remember your first calculator - electronic,
that is (slide rules and abacuses don't count - actually they do, right?)? Mine
was acquired sometime in the fall of 1976 during my first attempt at secondary education
at Anne Arundel Community College in Maryland, where eventually, in 1987, I was
awarded an Associate's degree in Engineering (which constituted the first two years
of my eventual BSEE at UVM in 1989, on whose notable alumni list I am not). My name
is not in AACC's list of notable alumni, either. But I digress. My calculator was
a Texas Instruments model SR-50 that had a small red LED display. It cost about
$100 ($445 in today's inflated money) and performed basic math with a few simple
trigonometric and logarithmic functions. This edition of Mac's Service Shop, entitled,
"Buying
and Using a Pocket Calculator," has Mac telling sidekick Barney about the Hewlett
Packard's HP-45 calculator. According to the Wikipedia entry, the HP-45 entered
the market in 1973 at a list price of $395 ($2,084 today). That's the price of a
high-end gamer's computer these days. Its features were about equal to my $100 SR-50
a decade later. For the budget minded calculator, he also recommended the Unicom
Model 202SR...
For the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst
us, each week I create a new crossword puzzle that has a theme related to engineering,
mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical words. This December 7th
Pearl Harbor Day crossword puzzle has a few words and clues relating to the
surprise attack in 1941. As always, the 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., Hedy Lamarr or the
Bikini Atoll). The technically inclined cruciverbalists amongst us will appreciate
the effort. Enjoy!!! |