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![To Be, Or Not to Be [a Metal] - Do Astrophysicists Know the Difference?: Kirt's Cogitations™ #374 - RF Cafe](miscellany/homepage-archive/2026/images/big-bang-universe-creation-kirt-blattenberger-hp.gif) As a
multi-decade-long amateur astronomer, I have read countless articles written by
astronomers who refer to all elements heavier than helium (#2 on the
periodic table of the elements) as "metals." Ostensibly, the origin stems from
early detection of heavy elements in stars, based on heliographic spectrum
investigations, where iron - being the most abundant stable byproduct of
supernova explosions - was most readily observed. I wondered if the "metals"
nomenclature came from the next heaviest element, lithium (#3 in the periodic
table), being a metal, thereby laying the foundation. Not so, claims AI, since
lithium is very rare overall in the universe, and not readily observed. For
clarity, I also procured the scientific distinction...
 I usually learn something new with each episode
of Mac's Radio Service Shop, but not necessarily related to electronics. Such is
the case this time where after Mac gives Barney a quick lesson in how to determine
a transformer's winding turns ratio when needing to create an impedance match circuit.
He then, while discussing whether "free" repair estimates are truly free or of any
real value at all, he uses the phrase "a horse on you." Maybe it is because I don't frequent bars that
I had never heard that, but after a little research I now know it refers to a bar
dice game called "'Horse." "A horse on you" is when you lose the final round of
a 2-out-of-3 challenge. "A horse apiece" is when you and your opponent each win
one round in a 2-out-of-3...
 "Data centers for AI are turning the world
of power generation on its head. There isn't enough power capacity on the grid to
even come close to how much energy is needed for the number being built. And traditional
transmission and distribution networks aren't efficient enough to take full advantage
of all the power available. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration,
annual transmission and distribution losses average about 5%. The rate is much higher
in some other parts of the world. Hence, hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services,
Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure are investigating every avenue to gain more power
and raise efficiency. The potential virtues of
high-temperature
superconductors..."
 Consumer grade
thermoelectric coolers have been around for so long now that most
people probably assume there is nothing wondrous about the discovery that makes
them possible. I still marvel at the process that allows the application of a current
through physical junction of two dissimilar metals (certain
types) to produce a cooling effect rather than the I2R heating normally associated
with conductors. This article from a scientist at Westinghouse Electric's research
laboratories provides a nice introduction to the subject of thermoelectricity from
both electric current generation based on the application of heat to a dissimilar
metals junction, and the aforementioned cooling effect possible from passing a current...
 FM radio has been in the news fairly frequently
in the last couple years as phone manufacturers and the
National Association of Broadcasters lobby the FCC and politicians
to mandate the inclusion of FM radio capability into every phone manufactured. In
a ploy to exploit the gullibility and egos of said bureaucrats and pols, their primary
argument that FM radio is a "first informer in times of crisis," assuming of course
that people will miss news of "the big one" when and if it occurs. To my knowledge,
successful reception of FM radio on a cellphone requires the listener wear a set
of wired ear buds since the wire from the phone to the ear buds functions as the
antenna. What percentage of cellphone users would bother to carry a set of ear buds?
I, of course, am a huge proponent of...
 Arthur Brach created many
crossword puzzles for Popular Electronics magazine in the 1950s and
1960s. Unlike the hundreds of RF Cafe Crossword Puzzles I designed over more than
two decades, the PE puzzles usually have a few words that are not specifically related
to electronics and/or technology. Still, they are a good source of a brief break
from the day's business. You will need to print out this crossword puzzle to work
it, since it is not interactive. Have fun.
 "Fair
Trade" was a policy established in the post-WWII era in response to what consumer
retail groups considered business-ruining cost cutting by dealers who offered to
sell products at or barely above cost in order to steal profit from other stores.
So-scheming stores planned to make up for the low profit margin with high sales
volumes. Doing so drove a lot of the local competition out of business, leaving
the crafty dirty dealers to later raise prices. Stores that had manufacturer-sanctioned
service shops often got screwed because they were obligated to repair items like
TVs and radios that were bought from another dealer who did not do service work.
Profit margins on repair work - at least from honest shops - were typically very
low, so the owners depended on new product sales...
 Yowza, yowza, yowza
(The Jazz Singer),
QentComm's stock will be rising soon! "Quantum technology is already alive and
well in telecom networks, and although security is the top-of-mind use case, telcos
are also looking at quantum to make networks more resilient and transmit information
more quickly. Comcast announced this week it completed a trial with AMD and Classiq
that leveraged quantum software to find independent backup paths for network sites.
Elsewhere, Deutsche Telekom and Qunnect successfully demonstrated
quantum teleportation over an existing fiber network in Berlin..."
 The persona of Scott Adams' "Dilbert" is
described exactly in the opening sentence of this article in a 1930 edition of
Radio-Craft magazine. It is amazing - if not frustrating - to realize how
long the perception of science-minded people being introverts has been around. Dilbert's
"pointy-haired-boss" is nailed in the second sentence.
Georg von Arco is celebrated here as a major contributor to the
advancement of early radio, particularly wireless telegraphy equipment development.
Interestingly, as brought to my attention by Melanie as she did the text clean-up
after OCRing the magazine page, von Arco worked at the Sayville radio transmission
station on Long Island, New York, where the Telefunken Company's Dr. K.G. Frank
was arrested and interred for the duration of the World War I for sending out
"unneutral messages...
 Lots of Hams still use this tried-and-true
system for
tuning antennas for efficient operation on a variety of bands.
There are plenty of multi-band designs that rely on traps to reactively isolate
portions of the antenna that properly resonate at the desired frequency, but there
is usually a price to be paid in VSWR. Poor VSWR; i.e., higher mismatch loss, can
be overcome with higher transmitter output power, but the real sacrifice for poor
matching is loss of receiving range. The utter simplicity of using an insulated
cord to vary the physical length of the antenna element(s) for tuning is hard to
beat. It could be impractical on a setup where access to the antenna mount is difficult,
but my guess is most people can make good use of it...
 In this 1958 Popular Science magazine
article titled "Russian
Proposes Global TV," Soviet engineer V. Petrov proposed a global TV relay using
three geosynchronous satellites at 35,800 km altitude, launched 120° apart from
the equator at ~6,000 mph to match Earth's 24-hour rotation. Fixed over sites like
the USSR, China, and USA, they would relay signals - uplink on meter waves, downlink
on microwaves - via inter-satellite links, enabling worldwide broadcasts beyond
line-of-sight limits with directional antennas mitigating solar interference. Each
would require 10-kW antenna power, potentially reduced via pulsed transmission (note
digital waveforms in the drawing). This closely mirrored Arthur C. Clarke's 1945
Wireless World article "Extra-Terrestrial Relays," which...
 Frequency crowding has evidently been an
issue since the early days of radio according to this 1930 article in Radio-Craft
magazine. The situation was really bad in the earliest times when unfiltered spark
type transmitters were the norm. Those pioneers could be credited, I suppose, with
being the first users of wideband communications, but it was not because they chose
to do so. Here author Clyde Fitch discusses the debate over whether there really
were such things as sidebands from modulation and makes an argument for their existence
based on analysis of various types of modulation. In particular, he predicts the
coming popularity of single sideband receivers with crystal-filtered channels, and
the need for matching SSB transmitters with... wait for it... carrier and sideband
suppression...
 "A new transceiver developed by electrical
engineers at the University of California, Irvine boosts radio frequencies into
140-gigahertz territory, unlocking data speeds that rival those of physical
fiber-optic cables and laying the groundwork for a transition to 6G and FutureG
data transmission protocols. To create the transceiver, researchers in UC Irvine's
Samueli School of Engineering devised a unique architecture that blends digital
and analog processing. The result is a silicon chip system, comprising both a transmitter
and a receiver, that's capable of processing digital signals significantly faster..."
 Somehow, after being in the RF business
for four decades, I have to admit to not being familiar with the term
"acceptance angle" for antennas. That is after having read scores
of articles on antennas. Maybe I did and just don't remember - embarrassing. Acceptance
angle is mentioned and explained in this article during the description of rhombic
antenna characteristics versus dipoles and multi-element designs. Although the author
focuses on television installations, information provided on signal reflections,
shadowing, ghosting, multipath, etc., is applicable to radio as well...
 Electrolytic capacitors have long been the
components that provide the highest capacitance density factor, that is, they have
the highest capacitance value for a given volume of space occupied. Anyone familiar
with electrolytic capacitors is aware of the polarization indicated on the package
(a marking or unique physical feature), indicating that there is required direction
for hookup; in fact, a backwards connection can lead to an explosive failure. While
physical construction of electrolytic capacitors have evolved over the decades since
this article was published, the fundamental operation has not. It is interesting
to note the reference to capacitors as "condensers," a name still commonly used
with internal combustion engine ignition systems and with some AC motors that use
them at turn-on for providing a starting coil phase shift...
 This 1959 Popular Science magazine
reprint of a 1925 Radio News magazine article focused is on visionary physicist
Robert H. Goddard's proposed Moon Rocket as a means to test
whether radio waves can traverse interstellar space, potentially enabling communication
with other planets. Amid recent radio achievements, including mysterious signals
during Mars' approach and solar disturbances recorded on Earth, the piece challenges
Oliver Heaviside's theory that radio waves are confined by Earth's atmosphere. Goddard's
innovative rocket, propelled by successive explosive charges to escape gravity and
reach the Moon, would carry a compact radio transmitter in its nose cone, broadcasting
signals throughout its flight. Astronomers would track...
 This week's
crossword puzzle, as with all RF Cafe puzzles, uses only words
pertaining to engineering, science, mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, astronomy,
etc. You will never find a reference to some obscure geological feature or city,
or be asked to recall the name of some numbnut movie star or fashion designer. You
will, however, need to know the name of a famous RF filter design software author.
Enjoy...
 "Broadband achromatic wavefront control
plays a central role in next-generation photonic technologies, including full-color
imaging and multi-spectral sensing. A research team led by Professor Yijun Feng
and Professor Ke Chen at Nanjing University has now reported a significant advance
in this field in PhotoniX. The researchers introduced a hybrid-phase cooperative
dispersion-engineering approach that combines Aharonov-Anandan (AA) and Pancharatnam–Berry
(PB) geometric phases within a single-layer metasurface. This strategy enables
independent achromatic control of wavefronts for two different light spin states..."
 As with the article in this month's issue
of Radio-Craft magazine (December 1937), the reference to a 200th anniversary
is understated by 88 years for 2025.
Luigi Galvani was sort of the Benjamin Franklin of biology in
that just as Franklin demonstrated that lightning was a form of electricity, Galvani
showed that signals sent from the brains to the appendages of animals were electrical
in nature. In my high school days in the 1970s, we duplicated his experiment by
making deceased frogs' legs twitch when motivated by a D cell. Today, such an exercise
would likely be met with demonstrations by animal rights people (whose lives, BTW,
have probably in some way been improved as a result of previous such experiments).
But, I digress. Mr. Galvani's name is...
 Superheterodyne receivers were originally
the sole domain of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which owned the patents
and refused to license them until around 1930. Hugo Gernsback, a contemporary editor
of the era, provides a little insight into the superregenerative receiver circuits
superheterodyne was about to replace, and why it was an important improvement in
technology. Sidebar: The question often
arises regarding the difference between a "heterodyne" circuit and a "superheterodyne"
circuit. The most popular answer that "super" refers to the IF being located above
the range of human hearing, which peaks at about 15 kHz. Doing so assured that
any IF leakage into the audio circuits would not be discernable by a radio...
 Carl and Jerry stories are usually a good
mixture of teenage curiosity, adventure, and electronics technology, but this "Out
of the Depths" episode is a bit too far-fetched. The first ninety percent of
this 1957 Popular Electronics magazine tale fulfills expectations, with
the boys applying their shared interest in technology while attempting to learn
and apply the technique of luring elusive fish from their safe dwelling places and
onto the ends of their hooks. A car battery, DC-to-AC inverter, tape recorder, and
high-gain microphone are the basis for the scheme. Things were going well, and I
expected the normal hard-fought victory with big, fat bass in their creels - and
then something only slightly more believable than finding a crashed alien spaceship...
 RCA, the
Radio Corporation of America was not merely a manufacturer of
radio, television, and phonograph equipment for home entertainment. The company
also made vacuum tubes for all sots of electronic equipment, and produced a weekly
radio broadcast called "Magic Key" on the NBC Blue Network. Sticking to their communications
roots, RCA today markets televisions, microwave ovens, Android-based tablet computers,
DVD / Blu Ray drives, telephones, 2-way radios, radios, clocks, antennas, and many
other devices - with no tubes in sight, not even in their TV displays...
 "Scientists at the University of New Hampshire
are using artificial intelligence to dramatically speed up the search for
new magnetic materials. Their approach has produced a searchable database containing
67,573 magnetic materials, including 25 previously unknown compounds that retain
their magnetism at high temperatures, a key requirement for many real-world applications.
'By accelerating the discovery of sustainable magnetic materials, we can reduce
dependence on rare earth elements, lower the cost of electric vehicles and renewable
energy systems, and strengthen the U.S. manufacturing base,' said Suman Itani, lead
author of the study..."
 Breaking News!
Espresso
Engineering Workbook™ v3.2.2026 has just been released. This makes the 49th
worksheet added. It calculates magnitude, phase, and group delay for Butterworth
and Chebyshev lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and bandstop filters. Outside of the
kilobuck simulators, finding a calculator for phase and group delay is extremely
difficult - believe me, I've searched extensively for years. Espresso Engineering
Workbook™ can be downloaded free of charge. All you need is Excel™ v2007 or newer.
It is provided compliments of my advertisers. Contact me if you would like your
company added to the next release.
 Disneyland opened its gates in Anaheim,
California on July 17, 1955. It was billed as the most high-tech theme park in the
world, with a "wow" factor on par with the World's Fair extravaganzas. One of its
much-ballyhooed features was the "realistic" jungle safari tour with life-like animal
automatons and authentic 3-D jungle sounds. This article, published less than a
year after opening day, highlights some of the equipment and methods used by artists
and engineers to achieve the effects...
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 • Revisiting
the
1996 Telecommunications Act
• China's
BeiDou Satellite (their GPS) Does Emergency Messaging
• How & When Will
Memory Chip Shortage End?
• At Age 25, Wikipedia
Refuses to Evolve
• Amazon Leo Asks FCC for
Satellite Launch Extension
• FCC Gives
Amazon OK for 4,500 More Satellites
 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.
 An article title with both "radar"
and "Great Lakes" (I lived a mile from Lake Erie) in the title is sure to catch
my attention, as did this. Author Norman Schorr reports on the state of the art
of radar equipment and usage for the purpose of maritime navigation. Research and
development, along with an ample surplus of components left over from World War II
facilitated a rapid adaptation of radar to many venues. Included among its applications
were airway and waterway navigation, rocket trajectory tracking, security systems,
speed measurement, weather observation, and aerial mapping. It is easy to take for
granted the capabilities of radar today with having the accumulated knowledge of
more than half a century on our side, but pioneers in the field had to think everything
up anew. I have to admit to being familiar with what a "Pliotron" was prior to reading
this article (it is Irving Langmuir's high frequency version of the Audion vacuum
tube)...
 "Hobnobbing
with Harbaugh" was a regular comic feature in Popular Electronics magazine
in the 1960s. Creator Dave Harbaugh chose topics ranging from husband-wife relationships
where the husband is a technophile of some sort and the wife either purposely or
unknowingly challenges his efforts to participate in his hobby, to contemporary
(at the time) subjects such as this month's treatment of biocells. Like solid state
electronics back in the day, bioengineering was a mysterious field few understood.
It received a great deal of attention by comedians and sci-fi film makers who got
a kick out of scaring people over the possibility of an alien contamination (a la
"The Andromeda Strain") or some secret government laboratory brewing up a deadly
contagion...
 The electrical circuit entitled "Resistors
Galore," which was part of the collection of posers in the June 1966 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine's "What's Your EQ" (EQ = Electronics Quotient, a la IQ = Intelligence Quotient)
feature, resulted in an interesting response from a reader. Mr. Milton Badt
submitted the bit shown to the left ("Ladder Lingo") in the following January edition
of the magazine. Interestingly, while he pointed out the significance to the relation
to phi (φ), defined as (1+√5)/2, he did not also note that the fraction is commonly
referred to as the
Golden Ratio, and its result, 1.618034... is called the Golden Number. A rectangle
with side lengths who's proportions are according to a/b = φ is called
a Golden Rectangle. There is also a resistor | capacitor voltage divider, and a
mystery power source challenge...
 This is the electronics market prediction for
the
Netherlands, circa 1966. It was part of a comprehensive assessment by the editors
of Electronics magazine of the state of commercial, military, and
consumer electronics at the end of 1965. Philips, headquartered in Amsterdam,
was singled out as a prime mover for the country. Established in 1891, Philips
is still today a major economic contributor for the Netherlands. Electronics'
end-of-year issue published its prognostication for Europe as a whole as well as
for many individual countries. It also attempted to assess the Soviet Union's
(USSR) electronics industry...
 If you think the ISM (Industrial,
Scientific, and Medical) unlicensed bands were a relatively new spectrum allocation,
you might find this 1960 Electronics World news piece interesting. Individual
countries generally acknowledge the ISM emissions specifications set forth by the International
Telecommunication Union (ITU), which created the bands in 1947. The 900 MHz, 2.4 GHz,
and 5.8 GHz WiFi bands are well known to most people. 24 GHz is gaining traction
as current spectrum gets more and more crowded and high bandwidth data channels are needed.
Interestingly, the first few ISM bands are integer harmonics of the lowest (6.78 MHz,
center of band 1)...
 Here is a very useful article on the benefits
and technical challenges of
stacking antennas; it appeared in a 1958 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine.
It avoids rigorous mathematical analysis and instead presents recommended guidelines
and includes some very nice measured antenna patterns (no computer-generated predictions
in 1958) of the various configurations. The authors discuss radiation pattern changes
based on horizontal versus vertical stacking, and a combination of both. Plotting
all the vertical and horizontal radiation patterns would have take a lot of time
with a slide rule back in the day. This is the first of a series written by engineers
at the Scala Radio Company...
 When designing a receiver or transmitter
using discrete components rather than connectorized components or packaged integrated
circuits, where the interfaces are at or near 50 + j0 Ω, adding frequency selectivity
beyond that provided by the generic response requires inserting separate filters.
If you are designing the entire signal path, including the biasing, feedback (if
any), and stage interfaces from scratch, you can include features that increase
frequency selectivity. In the "old days" with vacuum tubes and interstage coupling
transformers being commonplace, the addition of a few
capacitors made response peaking a simple advantage to implement. The National
Company frequently advertised in QST magazine to appeal to Hams with their extensive
line of radio wares...
 Each week, for the sake of all avid cruciverbalists
amongst us, I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created
lexicon related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy,
etc. Words for clues having an asterisk (*) after them are part of this week's Easter
theme. 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,
see someone or something in the exclusion list who or that is directly related to
this puzzle's theme...
 This custom RF Cafe
electronics-themed crossword puzzle for February 5th contains words and clues
which pertain strictly to the subjects of electronics, mechanics, power distribution,
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.
 This custom RF Cafe
electronics-themed crossword puzzle for April 9th, Easter Sunday, contains words
and clues which pertain exclusively to the subjects of electronics, science, physics,
mechanics, engineering, power distribution, astronomy, chemistry, etc. It'll keep
you busy while the kids hunt for Easter eggs. If you do see names of people or places,
they are intimately 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.
 Seamless integration of wireless communications
with wired communications has not always been a yawn in technical strategy discussions.
It has really only been since the early 1990s with the introduction of ubiquitous
cellphone systems that someone on a wireless device could connect directly with
a wired (i.e., landline) contact and not need an intermediary operator to facilitate.
Some
military comms, the Inmarsat system and a few other proprietary systems were
available, but not to the public at large. This article reports on some of the
Army's early attempts at implementing wireless-to-wired communications,
specifically as implemented during the Normandy Invasion on D-Day. Unlike
present day systems that rely heavily on data compression and massive
multiplexing, those systems allocated the standard audio (voice) bandwidth...
 The December 1965 issue of Electronics
magazine reported in multiple articles on the state of
Japan's electronics industry. Japan's indisputable lead today
in many realms of semiconductor, commercial, and consumer products proves successful
implementation of the strategy described in these articles. Per this piece's NTT
employee authors, "In one decade, Japan's semiconductor industry has become the
world's second largest. Pioneering engineers, a variety of unusual devices, and
breakthroughs in miniaturization techniques account for phenomenal growth." A notable
claim is taking credit for inventing the ceramic "pill" packaging format for high
frequency transistors...
 Capacitors have been used as transducers
in one form or another since their electrical characteristics were first discovered.
An
electrical transducer is a device that converts some form of energy into an
electrical signal. This transformation allows for the measurement, detection, or
communication of various physical phenomena. There are various types of electrical
transducers, each designed to convert specific types of physical quantities into
electrical signals. Some common types of electrical transducers include: pressure,
temperature, strain, light sensors, accelerometers, microphones, ultrasonic, magnetic,
gas, and position and displacement. Back in the 1980s I worked as an electronics
technician (pre-BSEE degree from UVM) for a company in Vergennes, Vermont, called
Simmonds Precision Products. Their products were fuel measurement systems primarily
for commercial and military aircraft. The sensors / transducers were capacitive
in nature, consisting of coaxial tubes which stood vertically in the fuel tanks
and used the fuel as a dielectric to vary the capacitance according to its ratio
relative to air between the tubes. The transducers were positioned at strategic
locations within the tank to provide an accurate measure of fuel regardless of the
attitude and acceleration of the aircraft...
 Radio & Television News magazine
was not normally in the practice of instructing retail outlet salesmen and service
shop owners in techniques for hacking their wares, but this article in the June
1951 issue is an exception. In it, A.W. Bernsohn, Managing Director of the
National Appliance & Radio Dealers Association, extensively outlines many
tried and true schemes for use in convincing customers that they really do need
a new, reconditioned, or rental portable radio for those lazy, hazy, crazy days
of summer*. Those were the days long before iPods, Walkmans, and smartphones, when
"portable" meant maybe smaller than a breadbox, but powered by batteries rather
than an AC outlet. If any of the featured models appeal to your sense of nostalgia
and you want to lay you hands on one again, try eBay; eventually just about everything
shows up there. M. Bensohn even covers the ramification of Regulation "W" of
the Federal Reserve Act...
 This custom made
Electronics theme crossword puzzle for January 1st is provided compliments of
RF Cafe. A special message is included (marked with asterisk *). 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, 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 (e.g., Reginald Denny or the Tunguska event in Siberia). The technically inclined
cruciverbalists amongst us will appreciate the effort. Enjoy!
 In March of 1958 when this article appeared
in Popular Electronics, learning of semiconductor devices other than
transistors was usually new to experienced professionals as well
as to hobbyists. Vacuum tubes still dominated electronic products in the day. Companies
like General Electric, Sylvania, and RCA were the pioneers for development of Zener
diodes, photodiodes, SCRs, thyristors, etc. Relatively simple compounds like selenium,
germanium, silicon, and lead and cadmium sulphides were used. The exotic witch's
brew of elements in modern semiconductors - particularly those used to
photovoltaics - were likely not even envisioned in 1958. This article discusses
some of "new" devices using simple compounds...
 Cesium-137, iodine-131, carbon-14, plutonium-239,
strontium-90, uranium-235, and the list goes on. These and other
radioisotopes associated with nuclear material are the result of
explosions, medical treatments, laboratory experiments, or in some cases
naturally occurring deposits. Regardless of the source, most people, including
me, cringe at the thought of being exposed to the insidious effects of the
cell-altering energy they possess. Ionizing radiation is the dangerous type of
radiation due to its ability to dislodge electrons from atoms, and in the
process forming cancerous cell mutations or killing the cells altogether.
Researchers in the early days of radiation discovery experienced sometimes
gruesome maladies as a result of the handling isotopes. Some knowingly subjected
themselves to harmful doses...
 Optical illusions have always been a big
attention-getter. Many companies have employed their intrigue to promote their products
and/or services. This
optical illusion was used by Littelfuse (not Littlefuse), a company founded
in 1927 and still in business today, to draw attention to a full-page advertisement
in a 1953 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine. More interesting than the illusions,
though is the information presented is about how their proprietary glass-encased
fuse design will always burn out in the center of the link, where it is visibly
obvious. It might seem trivial, but having tested fuses that appeared to be good
but tested bad, that is a great feature. Modern plastic-encased fuses with spade
terminals like those found in automobiles have a similar feature that makes visual
inspection very easy and unmistakable. In another Littelfuse ad, they educate the
reader about how a fuse's amperage rating is not the amperage level at which it
will blow... |
