Today in Science History -
 The decade of the 1960s was probably the
heyday of television. Household incomes had been steadily rising since the end of
World War II while inflation was relatively low. The Korean War was over and
until around 1965 the country was not on a serious war footing. Game shows, soap
operas, shows depicting non-dysfunctional families, variety show formats, non-woke
cartoons, movies, and newscasts that didn't insult half the country with biased
coverage fed the country's appetite for wholesome, useful entertainment. Once violent
race riots and hippie anti-establishment protests became a major threat to safety
and civic deportment, people monitored radio and television to keep abreast of events.
In accord with rapidly improving television sets were advances in
antenna technology. Viewers wanted the best possible picture and audio, and
were willing to pay dearly for it. Through around the end of the 20th century, after
which cable dominated as a transmission medium, over-the-air broadcasts in increasingly
crowded RF environments made higher performance antennas even more necessary...
 "Many situations arise in which an antenna
needs to dynamically reconfigure its center frequency or beam pattern. In some cases,
this can be done with a steerable, multi-element antenna array, but it's often not
a viable solution for various reasons. As an alternative, a team of electrical engineers
in the Penn State College of Engineering devised an innovative design for a reconfigurable
patch antenna dubbed a
reconfigurable compliant mechanism antenna (rCMA). The antenna, which leverages
the inherent elastic properties of selected material to create a desired motion
through controlled deformation, is designed to operate up to 10 GHz. These
compliant mechanisms can be made as a planar structure from a single material yet
still achieve multi-axis motion. Further, they can be designed as a full structure
with minimal or even no assembly, require no lubrication, and their reliability
is high, as it's based on the elastic properties of the material..."
 Amateur radio station operators seemed to
always be amongst the first to lose their rights in time of war. Governmental power
brokers - from unelected local bureaucrats on up to presidents - love to demonstrate
their influence over citizens when the opportunity arises. The
Radio Act of 1912 revoked the rights of amateur radio stations to operate, and
in some cases authorized the confiscation of radio equipment for use by the government.
Permission was not restored until 1919, after World War I. Amateurs took it
on the chin again in World War II with revocation of licenses. In this 1917
article in The Electrical Experimenter magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback
makes the case for permitting "our red-blooded boys be trusted to assist our officials
in running down spies." "...we realize how absurd it is to close all privately owned
radio stations during the war," says he. It fell on deaf ears, as usual. As the
now mayor of Chicago once famously said, "You never want a serious crisis to go
to waste..."
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or the requirements are such that a custom approach is necessary...
 The
International Geophysical Year (IGY) was an international scientific project
that took place from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958. It was a collaborative
effort involving scientists from around the world to conduct research in various
fields of geophysics. The IGY was organized in response to a proposal by the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) to promote international cooperation in the
study of the Earth and its environment. The project aimed to advance our understanding
of Earth's physical properties, including its atmosphere, oceans, and solid Earth.
During the IGY, scientists conducted research in a wide range of disciplines, such
as meteorology, seismology, glaciology, oceanography, and solar physics. They used
cutting-edge technologies and established numerous research stations across the
globe to gather data. One of the most significant achievements of the IGY was the
International Geophysical Year Antarctic Program. Several countries established
research bases in Antarctica, leading to significant discoveries about the continent's
geology, weather patterns, and wildlife...
 It was a lot of work, but I finally finished
a version of the "RF & Electronics Schematic & Block Diagram Symbols" that
works well with Microsoft Office™ programs Word™, Excel™, and Power Point™.
This is an equivalent of the extensive set of amplifier, mixer, filter, switch,
connector, waveguide, digital, analog, antenna, and other commonly used symbols
for system block diagrams and schematics created for Visio™. Each of the 1,000 or
so symbols was exported individually from Visio in the EMF file format, then imported
into Word on a Drawing Canvas. The EMF format allows an image to be scaled up or
down without becoming pixelated, so all the shapes can be resized in a document
and still look good. The imported symbols can also be UnGrouped into their original
constituent parts for editing. Check them out!
 Withwave manufactures an extensive line
of metrology quality coaxial test cable assemblies, connectors (wave-, end-, vertical-launch,
board edge, panel mount), calibration kits (SOLT), a
fully automated
4-port vector network analyzer (VNA) calibrator, between- and in-series connector
adaptors, attenuators, terminations, DC blocks, torque wrenches, test probes &
probe positioner. Special test fixtures for calibration and multicoax cable assemblies.
Frequency ranges from DC through 110 GHz. Please contact Withwave today to
see how they can help your project succeed.
 After reading the first paragraph of this
"Mac's Service Shop" technodrama entitled, "Technician
of Consulting Engineer?," I expected to be told a story about the seemingly
excited customer exiting the shop as he returned from lunch. Had the man made an
unreasonable demand on Mac McGregor, the proprietor, and was rebuffed appropriately?
It never materialized. In the second paragraph underling technician Barney mentions
having seen two men exiting the shop on his way in, not just one. At that point
I'm wondering what sort of melee had just occurred. As it turned out, my interpretation
of the event was totally incorrect. While explaining the happenings to Barney, he
imparts, as he is want to do, a couple clever bits of technical information in the
process. This appeared in the October 1960 issue of Electronics World magazine...
 Windfreak Technologies designs, manufactures,
tests and sells high value USB powered and controlled radio frequency products
such as RF signal generators, RF synthesizers, RF power detectors, mixers, up /
downconverters. Since the conception of WFT, we have introduced products that have
been purchased by a wide range of customers, from hobbyists to education facilities
to government agencies. Worldwide customers include Europe, Australia, and Asia.
Please contact Windfreak today to learn how they might help you with your current
project.
 "There was a time, decades really, when
all it took to make a better computer chip were
smaller
transistors and narrower interconnects. That time's long gone now, and although
transistors will continue to get a bit smaller, simply making them so is no longer
the point. The only way to keep up the exponential pace of computing now is a scheme
called system technology co-optimization, or STCO, argued researchers at ITF World
2023 last week in Antwerp, Belgium. It's the ability to break chips up into their
functional components, use the optimal transistor and interconnect technology for
each function, and stitch them back together to create a lower-power, better-functioning
whole. 'This leads us to a new paradigm for CMOS,' says Imec R&D manager Marie
Garcia Bardon. CMOS 2.0, as the Belgium-based nanotech research organization is
calling it, is a complicated vision. But it may be the most practical way forward..."
 If only eBay had been around at the end
of World War II, this surplus equipment would have dominated the electronics
and electromechanical gizmo categories. Electronics magazines of the post-WWII era
were filled for years with advertisements like this one from G & G
Radio Supply Company in a 1953 issue of Radio & Television News magazine.
That B-29 bomb sight, like the one used on the Enola Gay, could be purchased brand
new for a scant $295, which even in equivalent 2018 dollars of $3,3142,758 (per
the BLS), is a steal. This is not the famous Norden bombsight, but it's still a
sweet collector's item, which is available on eBay today if you would like to own
one. Already have a B-29 bombsight? How about a complete IFF (Identification Friend
or Foe)
secondary radar system? For a mere $350 you could have owned a complete rack
of RC−188−A equipment, including the rack and chassis, a 450 W power supply,
a 157-185 MHz transceiver (not in the Ham bands), a 5" CRT display, and a slew
of vacuum tubes...
 One great thing about being a member of the
ruling class of a Communist and/or Marxist dictatorship is not being held accountable
to the pesky citizens when making laws, spending, military action, social policies,
environmental actions, medical actions, etc. You simply spend whatever amount of
money deemed necessary to accomplish your desired ends - the people be damned. You
would be forgiven if you thought I was referring to modern-day America, but I'm
actually addressing China. Here from the
South China Morning Post (one of my regular sources for tech headlines) is a
story ridiculing the U.S. national debt. SCMP claims the amount of above-ground
gold equals a cube 19.2 m per side, whereas the
USGS
says 23 m per side (50% greater volume). BTW,
China's national debt
is estimated to be at $14.4T. U.S. national
debt is currently at $31.8T.
 University of Southampton, England, professor
James Holbrook suggests in this 1968 Radio-Electronics magazine article
an "easy-to-follow substitute for the left- and right-hand rules," but I'm not so
sure that the good professor's "Electron Orbit Method" is any better or easier to
remember. Admittedly, it is hard to remember whether the use a left-hand rule or
a
right-hand rule for the various physical laws - motor rotation direction, current
induction, torque, vector cross products, etc. Those involving current flow are
made even more confounding because you need to know whether the creator of the rule
refers to conventional current flow (positive-to-negative) or electron current flow
(negative-to-positive). Note in Figure 110 from the Electricity volume of Basic
Navy Training Courses how the generator rule is described as a left-hand rule with
conventional current flow. However, the modern version for electron current flow
uses a right-hand rule...
 With more than 1000
custom-built stencils, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio
Stencils available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings!
Every stencil symbol has been built to fit proportionally on the included A-, B-,
and C-size drawing page templates (or use your own page if preferred). Components
are provided for system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, schematics, test equipment,
racks (EIA 19", ETSI 21"), and more. Test equipment and racks are built at a 1:1
scale so that measurements can be made directly using Visio built-in dimensioning
objects. Page templates are provided with a preset scale (changeable) for a good
presentation that can incorporate all provided symbols...
 The leading website for the PCB industry.
PCB Directory is the largest directory of
Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
Manufacturers, Assembly houses, and Design Services on the Internet. We have listed
the leading printed circuit board manufacturers around the world and made them searchable
by their capabilities - Number of laminates used, Board thicknesses supported, Number
of layers supported, Types of substrates (FR-4, Rogers, flexible, rigid), Geographical
location (U.S., China), kinds of services (manufacturing, fabrication, assembly,
prototype), and more. Fast turn-around on quotations for PCB fabrication and assembly.
 Little did anyone suspect when the Bell
Telephone Laboratories' "Sugar Scoop" antenna went online, as reported in this October
1960 issue of Electronics World magazine, that one of the greatest discoveries
of the astronomy world would be made with it five years later. Developed originally
to facilitate research on radio communications between the Earth and orbiting satellites,
physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson measured an unexplained level of background
noise in the realm of 2.7 Kelvins that persisted regardless of where in the
sky the antenna was pointed. After ruling out the antenna and receiver as the cause,
they surmised that the noise must be coming from the cosmos itself, and that the
characteristic of it agreed with the theoretical model of the universe at an early
stage in Big Bang event. It is now known as the
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB, CMBR)...
 You would be hard pressed to find an electronics
magazine today that included poetry as part of its typical features. I have published
pages from the ARRL's QST magazine from the 1940s that had poems. Of course,
the theme of the poems is almost always humor or parody, but poetry was not then
an unknown / unpracticed art by the general populace as it appears to be today.
Anyway, enjoy the jovial rhymes here from the August 1959 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine. Frequent comic contributor Carl Kohler provides the illustrations for
the rhymes of Saunder Harris...
 Werbel Microwave is a manufacturer of RF
directional and bidirectional couplers (6 dB to 30 dB) and RF power dividers
/ combiners (2− to 16−way) with select models operating up to 26.5 GHz and
100 W of CW power (3 kW peak). All are RoHS and REACH compliant and are
designed and manufactured in our Whippany, NJ, location. Custom products and private
label service available. Please take a couple minutes to visit their website and
see how Werbel Microwave can help you today.
 In the year 2023, it is easy to forget what
the field of personal computers looked like back in the early days of home computing
(assuming that you were even alive and a computer user then). My first PC (circa
1983) was a Sinclair ZX-80 model that had a membrane keypad, used a cassette tape
deck for storage, and connected to a television display via a video converter. My
first program beyond the obligatory "Hello World!" variety was one that plotted
a sine wave and cosine wave on the screen. From there, I moved on to a VIC-20, and
finally to my first "real" PC, an
ATT 6300
(in 1987, while at the University of Vermont, working on my BSEE). The ATT6300 came
with two, 5-1/4" floppy disk drives and no hard drive. It was a real step up when
I installed a whopping 10 MByte internal HDD, and then even added an 8087 math processor
to assist the 8086 processor. Its green monochrome monitor had a really weird resolution
that almost NO software was designed for, so it could cause display problems. UVM
required all engineering students to buy one from them, at around $3,000, as well
as an HP dot matrix printer that cost around $450...
RF Cascade Workbook is the next phase in the evolution of
RF Cafe's long-running series, RF Cascade Workbook. Chances are you have
never used a spreadsheet quite like this (click here for screen capture). It is a full-featured RF system
cascade parameter and frequency planner that includes filters and mixers for a mere
$45. Built in MS Excel, using RF Cascade Workbook 2018 is a cinch
and the format is entirely customizable. It is significantly easier and faster than
using a multi-thousand dollar simulator when a high level system analysis is all
that is needed. An intro video takes you through the main features...
 Empower RF Systems is the technological
leader in RF & microwave power amplifier solutions for EW, Radar, Satcom, Threat
Simulation, Communications, and Product Testing. Our air and liquid cooled amplifiers
incorporate the latest semiconductor and power combining technologies and with a
patented architecture we build the most sophisticated and flexible COTS system amplifiers
in the world. Solutions range from tens of watts to hundreds of kilowatts and includes
basic PA modules to scalable rack systems.
 The middle of the last century was the era
of science fiction with fantastic adventures and inventions. In order to engage
kids in the realm, clever and fearless teenagers were cast as leading characters.
The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tom Swift, The Radio Boys, The Radio Girls, and others
proved their sleuthing prowess, bravery, and ability to assess situations and respond
remarkably. That made the introduction of the
Carl & Jerry series in Popular Electronics magazine a pretty good
bet for John Frye. Mr. Frye had already been for many years writing technical
articles and what I have dubbed "technodramas," including the also popular "Mac's
Radio Service Shop" series. His stories always integrated not just high tech paraphernalia,
but also discussions of functional details of circuits, test equipment, and components.
This "Great Bank Robbery" story, in addition to being a bit hokey, weaved together
Ham radio operation, class "B" amplifier...
 Radio Canada International (RBI) is (was)
the worldwide version of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), operating
on the 9,745 kHz and 11,856 kHz shortwave bands. It carried broadcasts
from 1942 through 2012, by which time the widespread access to Internet broadcasts
rendered the service obsolete. What remains of RBI is a skeleton staff that generates
podcasts in a few foreign languages. As with the USA's Voice of America (VOA), RBI's
mission over the years was a combination of broadcasting for the sake of overseas
armed forces members, anti-communist/socialist propaganda, and news items. This
1972 Popular Electronics magazine article reported on the new, much more
powerful transmitters inaugurated in July of the previous annum. Its goal was to
reach the four corners of the Earth in the same way VOA had been doing for decades...
This advertisement for
General Radio Company's Recording Wave Analyzer (1965 Electronics magazine)
caught my eye due to the chain-driven interface between the upper Type 1900-A Wave
Analyzer and lower Type 1521-B Graphic Level Recorder chassis. Maybe that can be
considered an early form of the GPIB - General [Instruments] Physical Interface
Bus. I wonder how many neckties, a rigidly-enforced item of professional dress code
of the era, got caught in those exposed gears? ...or fingers for that matter? OSHA
would condemn such a platform these days. It is not apparent from the photograph
whether there is also an electrical interface. The quality of the printed chart
output is phenomenally good for 1965 equipment - and in color, no less. I also found
it interesting that a reference was made to "M. Fourier," as though maybe Fourier's
first name began with an "M," but in fact his full name is Jean-Baptiste Joseph
Fourier (French), so the "M." would be an abbreviated form of "Monsieur..."
 This custom RF Cafe
electronics-themed crossword puzzle for May 28th contains only words and clues
which pertain strictly to the subjects of electronics, mechanics, power distribution,
engineering, science, physics, astronomy, chemistry, etc. If you do happen see names
of people or places, they are directly related to the aforementioned areas of study.
As always, you will find no references to numbnut movie stars or fashion designers.
Need more crossword RF Cafe puzzles? A list at the bottom of the page links to hundreds
of them dating back to the year 2000. Enjoy.
 Anatech Electronics (AEI) manufactures and
supplies RF and microwave filters for military and commercial communication
systems, providing standard LP, HP, BP, BS, notch, diplexer, and custom RF filters,
and RF products. Standard RF filter and cable assembly products are published in
our website database for ease of procurement. Custom RF filters designs are used
when a standard cannot be found, or the requirements dictate a custom approach for
your military and commercial communications needs. Sam Benzacar's monthly newsletters
address contemporary wireless subjects. Please visit Anatech today to see how they
can help your project succeed.
 Here are three more puzzlers from the "What's
Your EQ?" section of the May 1963 issue of Radio−Electronics magazine. The Constant
Current circuit has two solutions, of which the first - the one I solved (hint:
first solve for the circuit impedance needed for the given voltage and current)
- is the simplest and most intuitive. You're probably smarter than I am and will
naturally arrive at the more sophisticated solution. Four-Way Switch is a piece
of cake it you've done electrical wiring (hint: you can make another configuration
switch from a 4-way). Don't let the vacuum tube diodes throw you on Rectified Voltage;
just replace the symbols with semiconductor diodes (hint: the fat line is the plate
= anode). Good luck.
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