|
 In 1961, when these
tech-themed comics appeared in Electronics Illustrated magazine,
the "Space Race" was in full swing. That, along with home hi-fi stereo
equipment, newfangled color televisions, and - gasp - transistors, filled the
headlines. They were also the subject of many forms of humor. These four comics
touch on many of those aspects, all centered on the Space Race. Of course,
everything is noticeably dated. "Flunking the code test" means not much to
Amateur radio licensees who earned their first license (like me, in 2010) after
the 5 WPM Morse code requirement was removed. Building something in "kit form"
was a good way to save some money and learn something...
 In our present "No user serviceable parts
inside" world of electronic products, it is easy to understand why very few people
have an appreciation for the technical prowess needed to troubleshoot and repair
them. When reading through these episodes of "Mac's Radio Service Shop" that appeared in mid last century editions
of Radio & Television News magazine, I am inspired to envy the skills
that small electronics repair shop owners had for working on the old vacuum tube
based radio and television sets. Digital electronics has its own unique set of quirks
and special knowledge requirements to troubleshoot, but when everything is analog
rather than merely being required to be a "0" or a "1"...
 "The U.S. Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) has announced that it is once again accepting applications for its
Honors Engineer Program. Initiated in 2018, the one-year development program
gives selected candidates an opportunity to work with FCC personnel on innovative
issues in the communications and high-tech arenas, including 5G communications technology,
the national deployment of broadband services, and communications technologies intended
to improve access to those with disabilities. Those selected to participate in the
Honors Engineer Program will be eligible for continued employment at the agency.
Application to the FCC's Honors Engineer Program is open to recent college graduates
with an engineering degree..."
 This week's crossword puzzle theme is
Amateur
Radio. All RF Cafe crossword puzzles are custom made by me, Kirt Blattenberger,
and have only words and clues related to RF, microwave, and mm-wave engineering,
optics, amateur radio, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical subjects.
As always, this crossword puzzle 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...
 Submarines first proved their deadly capabilities
during World War II when Adolph Hitler's navy used them to torpedo not just
military ships but merchant ships in commercial trade routes between the Americas
and Europe. Hideki Tojo's navy used subs to conduct surveillance prior to the deadly
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Their naturally stealthy environment - underwater
- proved to be a difficult realm both for detection and for attack. Fortunately,
sensor technology developed quickly during the war, and soon a combination of air
and sea based methods were in use and proved very effective. Submariners no longer
sailed in relative security from being treated to a violent, icy burial at sea...
 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.
 As
the Soviet army closed in on the Peenemünde rocket base in March 1945, German engineers
led by
Wernher von Braun initiated a desperate evacuation of their revolutionary research.
Tasked by von Braun, engineer Dieter Huzel organized the transport of tons of top-secret
blueprints and records to avoid capture by the advancing Red Army. Amidst the chaos
of collapsing lines and aerial warfare, Huzel successfully secured the documents
in an abandoned, ironclad mine near Goslar, shielding them from Soviet hands. After
dynamiting the entrance to seal the cache, Huzel and fellow scientists fled westward
to surrender to American forces. Following their successful arrival in U.S. lines,
the location was revealed...
 Sending telegraph messages, whether by wire
or wireless means, has always been expensive, particularly considering charges are
determined by the character (letter, number, symbol). Accordingly, the Shakespearean
line from Hamlet declaring that "brevity is the soul of wit" can be reworked to
"brevity is the soul of economy." A telegraph wire, unlike a telephone call, is
a legally binding communiqué, as is of course a written letter, but a telegram is
immediate transmission of information for time-critical messaging. A series of "commercial codes" were developed enabling senders to save often
significant money by sending multi-character codes that represented entire phrases
and/or sentences. What struck me about this article that appeared in a 1948 issue
of The Saturday Evening Post magazine...
 "With all the many pressures you have as
a product designer, does
electromagnetic
compliance (EMC) always seem like a stumbling block to delaying product sales?
Is your product exhibiting one of the top three failures: radiated emissions, electrostatic
discharge, or radiated immunity? Are you continually cycling between design/fixing
- running to the compliance test lab - failing again - and back to shot-gunning
more fixes? Wondering how to attack these issues earlier in the design cycle? Would
you like to learn how to characterize and troubleshoot simple design issues right
on your workbench? Then, this monthly column is for you..."
 In 1938, the designers at Sears, Roebuck &
Company's, Silvertone radio division were truly thinking "outside the box" when
they came up with this "Rocket" model
Models 6110. It is an ultra compact tabletop design with a unique
rounded top and a huge tuning dial that comprised one entire end of the Bakelite
cabinet, along with a set of six pushbuttons for station recall. Also published
were datasheets on the
Allied Radio Knight Model E10913, the
General Electric Model GD-52,, and the
Zenith Models 6D302, 6D311, 6D326, 6D336, 6D360. An ever-growing
list of models is at the bottom of every page...
 What drew my attention with this
P.R. Mallory & Company advertisement was not an actual
electronic component that they are most noted for - potentiometers, capacitors,
switches, metal alloys, and of course batteries (later renamed Duracell). Philip
Rogers Mallory began his company manufacturing tungsten wire for lamps. Rather what
interested me was the huge variety of standard potentiometer and rotary switch extension
shafts. Unlike modern electronics where pots and switches are typically mounted
to the enclosure with wires running to the circuit assembly, many...
 The failure to recognize
Nathan B. Stubblefield as the primary inventor of radio is a classic example
of how institutional power, financial interests, and the legal machinery of the
telecommunications industry tend to favor those with corporate backing over solitary,
unconventional inventors. Stubblefield's technology, which he demonstrated as early
as 1892, utilized induction and conduction through the earth and water rather than
the electromagnetic wave propagation (Hertzian waves) that ultimately became the
standard for modern radio. Because his method was effective only over relatively
short distances and functioned on different physical principles, it was eclipsed
by the work of Guglielmo Marconi. Marconi was the superior marketing force. He was
backed by a massive corporate infrastructure and was savvy in securing international
patents...
 Author T.A. Gadwa employs a
standing wave mechanism analogy that I don't recall having read
before - that of a dam on a river. The river is the transmission line with a lake
as the source and then he imagines a dam load. The dam standing waves, per his description,
have phase and amplitude characteristics that depend on how tall the dam wall is
relative to the surface height of the dammed river. An extensive array of graphs
is provided showing how the current of the dam standing waves react to the dam transmission
line termination impedance...
 Here are a couple more
electronics-themed comics, this time ones that appeared in the October 1951
edition of Radio & Television News magazine. When is the last time
you saw a comic in a technical magazine? Note the AC power cord attached to the
"portable" television. Television was a big deal in the day (I assume the "His"
on the guy's towel implies that "Hers" is at the other end of the power cord). Color
TV was not commercially available until a few years later. Nowadays, a person would
have a smartphone, tablet, or notebook computer while on the can. There is a huge
list of other comics at the bottom of the page...
 "Once upon a time in Europe, television
remote controls had a magic
teletext
button. Years before the internet stole into homes, pressing that button brought
up teletext digital information services with hundreds of constantly updated pages.
Living in Ireland in the 1980s and '90s, my family accessed the national teletext
service - Aertel - multiple times a day for weather and news bulletins, as well
as things like TV program guides and updates on airport flight arrivals. It was
an elegant system: fast, low bandwidth, unaffected by user load, and delivering
readable text even on analog television screens. So when I recently saw it was the
40th anniversary of Aertel's test transmissions, it reactivated a thought that had
been rolling around in my head for years..."
 I have a confession to make regarding the
puzzle titles. While all
RF Cafe crosswords do in fact use only my hand-entered dictionary
of terms and clues (literally thousands accumulated over the years) that pertain
exclusively to science, engineering, chemistry, physics, mathematics, astronomy,
etc., the choice for a particular title is to help attract search engines to the
page. There is nothing deceptive going on, just an attempt to exploit the nature
of search engine algorithms that rank pages based on meta tags coinciding with relevant...
 Sam Benzacar, of Anatech Electronics, an
RF and microwave filter company, has published his
April 2026 Newsletter that, along with timely news items, features his short
op-ed titled "Bell Labs in Murray Hill Celebrates." Sam, whose company is located
not far from Murray Hill, extolls the many discoveries and inventions that took
place there since its founding in 1925 as Bell Telephone Laboratories. It was originally
a subsidiary of AT&T and Western Electric, later becoming part of Lucent Technologies
and Alcatel-Lucent before Nokia's acquisition in 2016. Sam reports on the facilities'
recent 100th anniversary celebration. The list of accomplishments would will volumes...
 The transformative role of ferrites - crystalline
structures composed of iron oxide and metallic additives - in advancing modern electronics,
is reported in this 1961 Electronics Illustrated magazine article. Ferrites
uniquely combine magnetic properties with electrical insulation, enabling high efficiency
at frequencies where standard iron cores fail due to eddy current losses. This "electronic
wonder material" proved critical for television development, allowing for larger
picture tubes through efficient flyback transformers and deflection yokes. Furthermore,
ferrites revolutionized computing by providing reliable, compact memory cells, replacing
failure-prone vacuum tubes in machines like the Whirlwind I. Beyond these core
applications, the material facilitates innovations such as ultrasonic ...
 "In 1627, a year after the death of the
philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon, a short, evocative tale of his was published.
The New Atlantis describes how a ship blown off course arrives at an unknown island
called Bensalem. At its heart stands Salomon's House, an institution devoted to
'the knowledge
of causes, and secret motions of things' and to 'the effecting of all things
possible.' The novel captured Bacon's vision of a science built on skepticism and
empiricism and his belief that understanding and creating were one and the same
pursuit. No mere scholar's study filled with curiosities, Salomon's House had deep-sunk
caves for refrigeration, towering structures for astronomy, sound-houses for acoustics,
engine-houses..."
 Werbel's new
WM2PD-1.5-20.5-S-ECO, 2-way power divider covers 1.5 to 20.5 GHz and is
designed for engineers who need wideband performance in a compact, cost-efficient
package. Optimized for size, bandwidth, and manufacturability, it is well suited
for high-volume applications, lab use, and general-purpose signal distribution where
extreme port match is not required. Designed, assembled, and tested in the USA.
"No Worries with Werbel!"
 The radar system I worked on in the USAF
used two early memory types described in this 1956 Popular Electronics
magazine article. In fact, the radar was designed during that era, so it is no surprise.
Our IFF secondary radar had a whopping 1 kilobyte of
magnetic core memory in its processor circuitry. It consisted of 1024 tiny toroids
mounted in a square matrix with four hair-width enamel coated wires running through
them as x and y magnetization current lines, sense, and inhibit functions. If my
memory serves me (pun intended) after three decades away from it, the TTL circuitry
(no microprocessor) stored range values to calculate speed and direction from sample
to sample. The other memory type was a mercury acoustic delay line contraption having
a piezoelectric transducer at one end to launch an electrical pulse along its length
and another transducer at the other end to convert back to an electrical pulse...
 These are the schematics and parts list
for vintage vacuum tube radios
Westinghouse Model H-133;
Arvin Models 150TC, 151TC; and
Admiral Model 7C63, Chassis 7C1 as they appeared in the December
1947 issue of Radio News magazine. I scan and post these for the benefit
of hobbyists and historians seeking such information. As time goes by, there is
less and less likelihood that records of these relics from yesteryear's archives
will be made available. As with all historical information, it takes someone with
a personal interest in preserving the memories in order to fulfill the mission...
 KR Electronics has been designing and manufacturing custom filters
for military and commercial radio, radar, medical, and communications since 1973.
KR Electronics' line of filters includes lowpass, highpass, bandpass, bandstop,
equalizer, duplexer, diplexer, and individually synthesized filters for special
applications - both commercial and military. State-of-the-art computer synthesis,
analysis, and test methods are used to meet the most challenging specifications.
All common connector types and package form factors are available. Designed and
manufactured in the USA. Please visit NIC today
to see how we might be of assistance.
 Here is another electronics quiz for you
to try. Intuition from experience goes a long way here, but if all else fails you
can work out the details of the rectifier circuits to determine
which lamp received the most current. Keep in mind that the diode
symbols are not LEDs; it is the "A," "B," and "C" symbols inside circles
that are the lamps whose brightnesses are being considered. LEDs did exist at the
time this quiz was created in 1969, but the circuits would perform differently if
in fact LEDs were used for double duty of rectification and illumination...
 The more things change, the more they stay
the same. That saying applies to many recreational activities. Pick up a copy of
QST magazine that was published in the last year and look at
reader comments and you will find laments about the dwindling
participation of youngsters, an increased degree of incivility and rule breaking
during engagement, the high cost of getting into the hobby, yadda yadda yadda. I
witness it regularly in the model aircraft world, too. That is not to say the issues
are not true or irrelevant, just that they are persistent. Each generation, it has
been said, tends to think...
 I have long-maintained that the vast majority
of electrical problems on consumer products can be attributed to bad connector or
switch contacts. Just yesterday, I restored a 1970's-era TI talking kids' toy to
working order just by cleaning the plug-in program module and mating motherboard
contacts. RF Cafe website visitor / contributor Bob Davis sent this suggestion for
curing intermittent or non-responsive front panel buttons on test equipment and
other electronic gear like radios, remote keypads, games, tools, vehicles, keyboards,
locks, etc. His problem was with a R&S spectrum analyzer. He found a solution
from ButtonWorx, who manufactures replacement
pressure contacts for a large range of products. Some are entire arrays to replace
original parts, and others are individual switches for custom requirements.
 You wouldn't know it from the schematic,
but this
Coronet
Model C-2 tabletop radio has a very unique feature: The tuning scale/pointer,
and volume and tuning knobs are on the top of the case, that is, the face of the
radio points upward when properly displayed. When searching for photos of the Coronet
C2, I found a few examples where the radio was sitting on a surface with the face
situated vertically like a standard model, but the feet are clearly on the side
opposite the face. The schematic and parts list for the Coronet C2 radio appeared
in the February 1947 issue of Radio News magazine. There are still many
people who restore and service these vintage radios, and often it can be difficult
or impossible to find schematics and/or tuning information. I keep a running list
of all data sheets to facilitate a search...
|
 • UK
Secure Quantum Communications Boost
• 2026
PC Sales down 11.3%, Tablets down 7.9%
• Starlink
Becoming Mainstream Option
• U.S.
Engineering
Ph.D. Programs Losing Students?
• What
Hormuz Exposed About Semi Supply Chain
 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.
 Rudolf Engelbrecht, an alum of Oregon state
University, was inducted into the institution's Engineering Hall of Fame in 1998.
As evidenced in this full-page advertisement in a 1958 issue of Radio &
TV News magazine, Mr. Engelbrecht's work was instrumental in advancing
the state of the art in communications electronics while an engineer at Bell Labs.
Here, he is show with the four-stage
junction diode amplifier developed for military applications. It exploited the
variable capacitance nature of a varactor type diode to effect amplification in
the UHF and microwave bands. Engelbrecht went on to work at Radio Corporation of
America (RCA) later in his career. BTW, if you are wondering what other kind of
diode might there be other than a "junction" diode...
 This article reporting ongoing research for
auto anti-collision systems and backup warning systems appeared in a 1972 issue
of Popular Electronics has only come to practical fruition within the last
decade and a half. High-end cars were offering such equipment options in the
early 2000s, but it has only been commonplace since around 2010. 1972 components
were still pretty large and power hungry, and digital processing capacity and speed
was significantly less advanced as well. Bendix, one of the early developers of
anti-collision systems, estimated that the option on a new car might add about $200
to the price, which was a really ambitious estimate, even considering that is the
equivalent of $1,492 in 2024 money per BLS Inflation Calculator. The total add-on
cost of both anti-collision and backup warning systems...
 Windfreak Technologies is proud to announces
the availability of our
FT108, an innovative
programmable bidirectional filter bank spanning a frequency range of 5 MHz
to 8 GHz in 15 bands. Band selection can be controlled through USB, UART or
at high speeds through powerful triggering modes. Each unit is factory tested via
network analyzer with unique data stored in the device to help with its use. Crossover
frequencies are stored so the user can send a frequency command and the FT108 will
utilizes Intelligent Band Selection logic to automatically toggle the optimal
filter path based on minimum insertion loss. Readback of FT108 insertion loss at
any frequency between crossover points allows for easy amplitude leveling...
 There are still a lot of people who
wind their own coils, whether it be for an amateur radio rig or for work in
the lab. I know I've wound many a coil around a drill bit or wooden dowel. This
simple coil winding machine that appeared in a 1931 edition of QST magazine would
be a handy addition to anyone's bag of tricks, especially if find yourself winding
single-layer coils that have a fixed space between the windings. The home stores
like Lowes and Home Depot sell small pieces of oak that would be perfect for this
kind of project. A little stain and a coat of varnish would give it a real vintage
look. Use your soldering iron to burn your name onto the base...
 This is Part 2 of Mr. Joseph F. Verruso's
"Patent
Information for the Inventor" series in Electronics World magazine.
In the Part I write-up I included a little historical information on the Patent
Office. Searching on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) website can be
less than satisfying - especially since some browsers don't handle the TIFF image
files - so you might want to start with Google Patents where you can enter a more
verbose search string (and you can display the search results as a page of images).
See also "Infringers Beware," July 1966 Popular Electronics, Worldwide
Patent & Invention Resources, and RF Cafe Visitors' Patents...
 Here is a good treatise on
resistor ratings - voltage, current, and power - with and explanation and handy-dandy
chart for helping you figure out what type of resistor you need to suit the task
at hand. It appeared in the March 1953 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine, at a
time when resistors the size of a grain of salt were not invented yet (or for that
matter even tinier resistors on semiconductor dice), but the principles are still
the same. I do take issue with author Manly's assertion that there only being one
reason resistors fail: "The burnout occurred only because the resistor carried too
much current." He cites the failure (electrical and mechanical) of connected components
often being responsible for the excess current, but does now allow for a mechanical
failure of the resistor itself. A factory manufacturing defect or being subject
to excess vibration, temperature or shock can cause resistor failure. So can "walking
wounded" type damage done during the assembly process due to mishandling. I do like
the description given of the visual signs of an overheated resistor right up to
the point where the functionality-giving smoke escapes and the resistor stops working...
 Here are a few more
tech-themed comics from vintage editions (1962 and 1970) of Popular Electronics
magazine. The first comic with the transistors and fuse is really clever, IMHO.
It was one of the "Parts Talk" series. The other two are directed toward amateur
radio operators, but you don't need to be one to appreciate the humor. There is
a hyperlinked list at the bottom of the page of most of the other comics I've posted
over the years. It's a shame that comics rarely appear in contemporary technical
magazines - probably too afraid of offending someone...
 NASA's Surveyor series of lunar landers
were launched between 1966 and 1968, following the preceding controlled-crash-landing
Ranger probes. Being the May 1961 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine,
the news item showing an artist's concept drawing of the proposed Surveyor is impressively
close to the final product, shown in the photo to the left, taken by Apollo 12
astronauts after setting down very close to it. In other news, severe smog in the
Los Angeles area was found to highly attenuate experimental communications in the
36 GHz realm, although it had little effect below that. Looking at the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) charts of measured atmospheric attenuation levels,
no pronounced peak under normal wet or dry conditions occurs at 36 GHz...
 This week's custom
RF
Cafe crossword puzzle contains many words and clues specific to antennas (marked
with an asterisk*). All the other words and clues pertain strictly to the subjects
of engineering, science, physics, astronomy, chemistry, etc. If you do 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.
 The newest release of RF Cafe's spreadsheet
(Excel) based engineering and science calculator is now available -
Espresso Engineering Workbook™. Among other additions, it now has a Butterworth
Bandpass Calculator, and a Highpass Filter Calculator that does not just gain, but
also phase and group delay! Since 2002,
the original Calculator Workbook has been available as a free download.
Continuing the tradition, RF Cafe Espresso Engineering Workbook™ is
also provided at no cost,
compliments of my generous sponsors. The original calculators are included, but
with a vastly expanded and improved user interface. Error-trapped user input cells
help prevent entry of invalid values. An extensive use of Visual Basic for Applications
(VBA) functions now do most of the heavy lifting with calculations, and facilitates
a wide user-selectable choice of units for voltage, frequency, speed, temperature,
power, wavelength, weight, etc. In fact, a full page of units conversion calculators
is included. A particularly handy feature is the ability to specify the the number
of significant digits to display. Drop-down menus are provided for convenience...
 Before I forget, let me remind you while
on the subject of antenna design that beginning January 1, 2022, EZNEC Antenna Software
by Roy Lewallen (W7EL) is being offered free of charge. It is inarguably the world's
premiere package for amateur radio enthusiasts and is used by many professionals.
QST's Joel Hallas (SK) used it extensively as part of his monthly "The
Doctor Is In" column. This "ABCs
of Antenna Design" article appeared in a 1948 issue of Radio News magazine
in an era when nomographs, slide rules, and empirical testing and adjusting were
the primary tools of all designers. Digital and analog computers occupied entire
wings of buildings and could not calculate results nearly as well as EZNEC can on
even a low end Windows 10 computer...
 Since its launching on November 30 of last
year (2022), I have seen / heard a lot of news reports about the
ChatGPT content generator hosted by OpenAI.org. They label it a "chatbot." The
GPT suffix is an acronym for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. ChatGPT is an artificial
intelligence (AI) algorithm that creates a paragraph or two about a topic which
you enter in the webpage. Proponents hail it as one of the first instances of making
AI available to the public, and to facilitate information search and dissemination.
Opponents warn that ChatGPT is a scheme which can feed on its own self-generated
inaccuracies when generated content is posted online and used later by the same
algorithm. One aspect that occurred to me whilst experimenting with ChatGPT is that
while you are helping to train the AI algorithm, it is simultaneously training you
to communicate effectively with it, so it's a two-way process. Sometimes it takes
many iterations of a query to get the preferred results. Note that sometimes ChatGPT
server is so inundated with participants that you might need to submit your query
multiple times to get any result other than an error message. Feedback can be provided
to ChatGPT regarding the usefulness of its reply by clicking on the up or down thumb
icons. I could go into a little more detail about ChatGPT, but why not let the chatbot
extoll its own virtues...
 1957 was part of the heyday of the newfound
radio-in-your-car craze, and the public was voraciously consuming all the high
tech equipment it could afford. Rock and Roll music was on every teenager's mind
and many guys for the first time were able to have their own wheels and were outfitting
them with sound systems that could blast the latest works of Buddy Holley, Chuck
Berry, Elvis Presley, and Fats Domino. Those machines were the first babe magnets
used for cruising the strip on Saturday nights. Radio stations were popping up all
over the country, enabling cross-country travel with non-stop music, news, and variety
show entertainment. Ford and Chevrolet were not going to miss an opportunity, so
they delved into the high end mobile radio manufacturing business. As the quality
of broadcasts increased, noise caused by automobile ignition systems bubbled to
the top of issues affecting listening pleasure, including the distance over which
a broadcast could be received. This 1957 Radio & TV News article describes Ford's
efforts to please their customers' demands...
 Back in the days when I built a lot of prototype
electronic gear, project enclosures were generically referred as a "Bud
Box." Lab stock rooms always had a good variety of sizes and configurations
of the soft aluminum and sometimes plastic boxes that were easily drilled, punched,
filed, and painted to make professional looking equipment. Not all the project boxes
were made by Bud Industries, but just as everyone knows you're talking about a cola
when you say "Coke," it was understood that a "Bud Box" was a chassis for a home-brewed
circuit. They are still seen in construction articles of electronics hobby magazines
today. I have even seen test equipment and utility items for sale that are obviously
in a Bud Box type of chassis. This full-page advertisement for Bud Radio appeared
in a 1930 issue of Radio Craft magazine - a mere two years after opening their doors.
Note the Bud Lightning Arrestor that included $100 of equipment damage insurance
(equivalent to $1820 in 2023 money)...
 I finally managed to get an early edition
of The
Wireless World magazine for a reasonable price on a eBay auction. Now I
will be able to post a few of those articles from the UK to compliment those from
some of the American magazines. This particular edition is from March 9th, 1932.
My next target is to get a few from the World War II era which although it began
on December 7, 1941 from America's perspective, it officially began on September
1, 1939 for Europe. Warning for the weak of heart - epochal words like "niggardly"
and "parsimonious" are used herein, and therefore adult supervision should be employed
if ignorance might cause an objection to at least one of the aforementioned...
 Here is an instructive look back at the near
post World War II and Korean War timeframe when U.S. bureaucrats and industry
titans were considering the pros and cons of
selling our technology to foreign countries - especially to present and recent
past sworn enemies. 1964, when this article appeared in Electronics
magazine, was the Bay of Pigs era when the threat of nuclear war was on
everybody's mind. In those days there were still company directors who would
rather sacrifice potential profit in order to assure that their country would
retain its technological leadership, its military superiority, and its national
security. Others adopted the attitude that is the overwhelming rationale today -
if we don't sell products and along with it the technological intelligence -
then somebody else will. That philosophy slowly but surely...
 Triplett is a well-know name amongst electronics
technicians and engineers who have been in the business for any length of time.
Triplett meter movements (aka panel meters) were considered to be top-of-the-line
product in the days before digital meters and displays. They were used in industrial
instrumentation, in military equipment, and in amateur radio gear. Triplett is still
in business today but it appears they no longer sell just meter movements, although
there is a large supply (new and used) available on eBay and Ham radio websites
and swap meets. This advertisement for Triplett Thin-Line Instruments appeared in
the September 1942 edition of Radio Retailing Today magazine...
 The introduction of
field-effect transistors (FET's) into the electronics world was a major benefit to
designers needing lower power consumption and perhaps more importantly, high input impedances
for active circuits. The two most fundamentally distinct type of FET's are the metal-oxide-semiconductor
field-effect transistor (MOSFET) and the junction field-effect transistor (JFET). Both
FET types are voltage-controlled devices and do not require a bias current (hence the
high input impedance) like a bipolar junction transistor (BJT) does. Neither FET type
has a PN junction. A JFET uses a high resistance semiconductor channel region between
the source and drain with an ohmic contact to the gate, whereas the MOSFET has a insulative
oxide layer...
 It is probably safe to say that the vast
majority of cellphone users never consider that their cherished devices are fundamentally
radios, and with that capability they would be merely powerful PDAs. Even less likely
to be thought about is that as wireless devices, an antenna is needed to establish
communications. Up until the early 2000s, most cellphones had some form of
obvious antenna protruding from the case - either an extendable type or a molded
stub around an internal antenna. Operational frequencies at the time were
primarily in the 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, and 1900 MHz bands ,with 1/4
wavelengths of about 3.5 inches, 3.3 inches, 1.6 inches, and 1.5 inches, which
was convenient given the physical size of phones. Always seeking to develop new
features to outclass the competition, manufacturers decided... |
