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 Robert Balin created many quizzes for
Popular Electronics magazine during the 1960s and 1970s. Topics included
series circuits, electrochemistry, electronic analogy, electronic coupling, electronics
analogy, audio, electronic units, capacitor circuits, AC circuit theory, magnetic
phenomena, electronics geography, electronic noise, plugs and jacks, electronic
switching, diodes, and many more. This "Electronics Physics Quiz" is the 59th that I have posted. It challenges
you to name the effects that were first noticed as the result of unexpected actions
during laboratory experiments. Many of the names, as you might expect, eponymously
honor their progenitors. My score was 80%...
 Joe Cahak, owner of Sunshine Design Engineering
Services, has submitted another fine article for posting here. Joe has many years
of automated RF testing experience to leverage when writing this paper on making
measurements with scattering parameters (S-parameters) involved. He begins, "In many RF and Microwave measurements
the S-Parameters are typically expressed in dB (decibels) Magnitude units and Degrees
in the polar coordinate system. Network and Vector Network Analyzers and Spectrum
Analyzers all measure with voltage ratio measurements, so to convert to dB in terms
of volts we must use the following equation. The Spectrum Analyzer is a frequency
discriminating detector that detects the voltage for the signal. It will give the
amplitude of signal as a function of frequency. It is scalar in measurement dimension
magnitude...
 Sam Benzacar, of Anatech Electronics, an
RF and microwave filter company, has published his June 2026 Newsletter that, along
with timely news items, features his short op-ed titled "Millimeter-wave
5G: Physics Didn't Get the Memo." In it, Sam discusses how the wireless industry's
present-day talk regarding millimeter-wave 5G operating above 24 GHz sounds
a lot like the big plans it had for ubiquitous gigabit connectivity with micro base
stations located on every street corner that would assure continuous coverage. It
never materialized. The physics issues with above-24-Ghz path loss, shadowing, handset
(i.e., phone) construction, etc., will greatly affect the service's usefulness.
New items include SpaceX telling the FCC to scrap its Rural...
 The world's first electric wristwatch
went on sale on January 3, 1957 - the Ventura model, by Hamilton Electric, and it
retailed for $200. I use the event as the theme of the RF Cafe logo for that day
in history. Unlike today's electric watches which use a crystal for timing,
the early watches used a pulsed motor to energize the balance wheel coil, in place
of a mainspring and an escapement mechanism. Some "atomic" wristwatches today like
the Casio Waveceptor (<$40) use the WWV signals from Boulder, Colorado, to synchronize
the time with world standards. The watch shown in this article from the February
1958 edition of Radio-Electronics magazine is a model 500, which you can find more
detail about on the Unique Watch Guide website...
 RF Cafe visitor Mike M. sent this very
interesting note after reading this "Frequency Modulation Fundamentals" article: Again, you hit it
out of the ballpark, Kirt! Great article out of QST magazine. Absolutely
accurate to credit "The Old Man" Edwin Armstrong for the invention/development of
FM and much more, plus the work of Dan Noble, who worked with the Connecticut State
Police and Motorola as Director of Research. Also many, many others. Some that have
never been properly credited. Guys like Bob Morris, W2LV and Frank Gunther, W2ALS.
They were both interviewed by Ken Burns for "Empire of the Air". I was fortunate
enough to talk to both of these guys after I got my Tech license in 1970. My immediate
supervisor/mentor from 1972 until he retired in ~1990...
 Today has been a busy day, so a couple
electronics-themed comics from issues of vintage Radio &
Television News magazines help to relieve the stress a bit. I could never figure
out why these comics were buried deep inside most issues at the ends of article
continuations. These two were on pages 88 and 93. The top one is meant to demonstrate
just how obsessed the public was with the relatively new television phenomenon -
just look at what they chose to ignore on the display TV in order to get a peek
at the inside workings of a television set. The other comic, while clever in its
intent, would never pass editorial muster in today's world because of the great
hazard it represents...
 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...
 You genius types might not be able to relate
to the rest of us who read articles like this one entitled "Fundamentals of Color TV: The NTSC System" and are in awe of minds
that conjure such things as the NTSC System and then build, refine, and perfect
working hardware. Making the system backward-compatible with existing black and
white (B&W) signals added to the complexity and cleverness of the solution -
akin but more sophisticated than compatibility of stereo with original mono radio
transmissions. When catchy marketing slogans like the familiar (to old folks) RCA
television advertisement claim of "Before you see the color ... Your ColorTrak System
grabs it, aligns it, defines it, sharpens it, tones it ... and locks the color on
track," what it actually means is that a very smart bunch of engineers and scientists
spent a lot of time and money designing...
 San Francisco Circuits, a leading printed
circuit board fabrication and assembly supplier serving commercial and defense markets,
describes how
Military-grade printed circuit boards (PCBs) are designed for environments where
failure is not an option. Standards like MIL-PRF-31032, MIL-PRF-55110, and MIL-PRF-50884
define stringent requirements for materials, fabrication, testing, and traceability,
ensuring boards perform reliably in extreme conditions. These specifications guide
engineers and manufacturers in creating PCBs that withstand temperature extremes,
vibration, shock, and humidity far beyond commercial standards. MIL-PRF-31032 serves
as the modern umbrella specification, covering rigid, flexible...
 Welcome to the
RF Coaxial Connectors
Quiz, an essential module for any engineer or radio hobbyist focused on maintaining
interconnect integrity across their signal chain. Whether you are standardizing
your station hardware, troubleshooting high-frequency signal leakage, or verifying
the physical port interfaces for your test bench equipment, a thorough understanding
of coaxial connector characteristics - from the rugged reliability of the Type N
to the precision of the SMA - is vital. This assessment challenges your proficiency
in connector selection, exploring the differences in mating mechanisms, cutoff frequencies,
constant-impedance geometries, and the practical environmental...
 This could be one of the earliest reports
of
mobile communications between a private automobile and a home
base station. Using a personally designed and installed 5-meter transceiver both
at home and in his car, Mr. Wallace is able to talk to his 12-year-old son
on the way from work. My guess is that in 1935 there were not too many traffic jams,
even in Long Beach, California, so it is doubtful that was the cause for his announced
expected later-than-normal arrival home. The article states the automobile power
supply needed to produce 300 mA of current at 525 V, which is ~160 W
per Ohm's law, which seems unlikely considering car batteries were 6 V
at the time, and that would work out to ~26 A. My question is whether little
Billy possessed a license permitting him to talk back to dear old dad from the home
station...
 Prior to the International Geophysical Year
(aka IGY, which ended up running for a year and a half), spanning from July 1, 1957,
through December 31, 1958, not a lot was known about the upper atmosphere. May 1946,
when this article appeared in Popular Science magazine, was less than a
year after the end of World War II. During the war a lot was learned about
long distance wireless (radio) communications between and across continents and
ship to shore. Scientists theorized about the phenomenon of
charged particles at high altitudes which, being electrically conductive, could
reflect electromagnetic signals so that over the horizon signals could be exchanged.
Coincidence with sunspot activity and aurorae had already been established, but
more knowledge was needed. Rocket...
 This photo of Bell Telephone Labs' three
scientists, G.L. Pearson, D.M. Chapin, and C.S. Fuller, inventors
of the "Bell Solar Battery," reminds me of the very familiar shot of John
Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley huddled over their point contact
transistor in December of 1948. The "battery" terminology is an interesting
choice since we normally think of a battery as a charge storage device, but in fact
a battery is fundamentally a charge creation device. A secondary battery may be
recharged by reversing the depleted chemical (or other) process that generated the
initial charge, but it first created the potential via a basic charge separation
process. What we today refer to as a solar cell is a form of primary battery that
is not rechargeable. Just as some chemical batteries (cells) are reactivated by
replenishing the electrolyte, the solar cell is replenished by photons giving up
their energy to the semiconductor substrate...
 Here is the final installation of a 22 part
series entitled "The Saga of the Vacuum Tube," by Gerald Tyne, that appeared in
Radio News magazine in 1946. Part 1 was printed in March 1943. The collective
contents, which covered the development of the vacuum tube from its conception to
the end of World War I, could have been published as a stand-alone book. Author
Gerald F. J. Tyne presented the series to trace the development which
took place up to the end of World War I along a particular branch of the network
of roads which led to the modern radio tube. He traced the evolution from studies
of the interactions between heat and electricity as pursued by the early philosophers
and by the physicists who followed them (Lee de Forest, et al). These limitations
have been...
 There are many online
Fresnel Zone
calculators. Most do the basic calculation for the maximum radius of the Fresnel
Zone for a given frequency and separation between antennas. Some allow you to enter
an obstacle's distance from one of the antennas, and its height, then lets you know
if the obstacle falls within the Fresnel Zone. Very few plot the shape of the Fresnel
Zone, and even less include an obstacle positioned on the plot. Most rare are calculators
which take the curvature of the Earth into account. RF Cafe's new online Fresnel
Zone calculator handles all those parameters. Check it out...
 A few weeks ago I posted a two-part article
on the Taylor
super-modulation principle published in Radio & Television
News magazine in 1948. It was a newly announced technology at the time and
was written by its inventor, Robert Taylor. This piece entitled "Understanding Super-Modulation"
appeared a couple years later by another author, John McCord, where he describes
how it works , how to tune super-modulation circuits, and how it compares to other
modulation methods - all conveniently in "Ham language." Super-modulation is a form
of amplitude modulation (AM) that makes use of carrier and/or sideband suppression
to achieve greater efficiency. A panadaptor - aka pan-adapter, aka panadapter, aka
radio spectrum scope, aka panoramic adapter...
 It has been a long time since I heard this
saying: "Well, they always say that if you want to find out the best and easiest
way of doing something, just put a lazy man at the job." Mac McGregor offered that
line to his service shop technician Barney - in jest of course - when Barney explains
his million dollar invention idea for a
fool-proof vacuum tube tester that can be used by just about anyone.
Mac's Radio Service Shop creator John Frye often used the monthly techno-drama
to introduce some good ideas for new inventions and/or new methods for troubleshooting
problems. Somewhere along the line I think I have seen an advertisement for a tube
tester that used the automation concept dreamed up by Barney...
 I tend to be a traditionalist for most things,
but do not go out of my way to make trouble for other people who don't appreciate
the way things are and have been... as long as, per Thomas Jefferson, "It neither
picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." In other words, if your actions cause me no
financial or physical harm, I'm not likely to oppose your actions - unless they're
illegal. Many older Hams are greatly offended at the FCC for having removed the
Morse code requirement in 2005 for obtaining an amateur radio
operator's license. They see it as a way to separate the wheat from the chaff,
so to speak; that is to say, to maintain a barrier that keeps non-serious aspirants
from gaining entry into the ranks of the elite group...
 For more than a decade, I have been posting
these
Radio Service Data Sheets for radios and various other audio and
visual electronics sets that appeared in vintage electronics magazines. This one
for the Atwater Kent Model 649 all-wave, 9 metal tube, superheterodyne console radio
set was published in the November 1935 issue of Radio Craft. "All-Wave"
radios were popular at the time because they provided access to shortwave bands
so listeners could tune in foreign broadband stations - often with the rudimentary
built-in antenna. Short Wave Listening was actually a worldwide sport that had its
own cadre of enthusiastic participants, including a dedicated magazine entitled
Short Wave Listener...
 We
read a lot about the early radar system that was in operation at Pearl Harbor in December
1941 when the surprise attack by Japanese naval airplanes decimated the fleet with
a 3-hour-long raid beginning at around 8:00 on that sleepy Sunday morning. According
to "The Untold Pearl Harbor Radar Story," by C.P. West, the SCR-270B (Signal Corps
radio #270, rev B) radar system had a range of 250 miles at an altitude of 50,000
feet. Westinghouse built the system in 1940 following a development contract issued
by the Army Signal Corps in 1936. Historical documents report of the three systems
on the island, two had been shut down and that with the remaining system, operators
Joseph Lockard and George Elliot detected a formation of aircraft about 137 miles
out to sea. They were told it was a squadron of B-17s and to not worry about it...
 This news bit from a 1951 issue of Radio-Electronics
magazine reports on the FCC's declaration of illegality the practice by some
FM broadcasting stations of providing a means for
blanking out commercials and station identification to entities
willing to pay for the special receivers and pay for a subscription. Nobody I have
ever known looks forward to enduring commercials on television or radio (or Internet
these days). The only way most of us could listen to music without interruption
was to by a record, tape, or CD. VHS tapes and DVDs provide some relief from commercials,
although even though you pay for them there are typically promotions for other movies
at the beginning. Commercials on radio and television (and now the Internet) have
consumed a larger part of each hour of programming with each passing year. The DVD
collections we have of 1960s and 1970s Prime Time TV shows average run times of
about 54-55 minutes...
 This is another example of a multi-part
article of which I happen to have discovered only one of installments - Part 9.
As is often the case, each article is pretty much stand-alone and does not require
that you have already seen the previous sections. In 1951, computers were still
mostly analog; digital circuits were just beginning to get serious research thanks
to the recent advent of solid state devices. Boolean algebra, truth tables, and
combinational logic were just beginning to be taught in engineering courses.
ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), first used
in 1945 at the end of World War II, was the world's first general purpose
digital computer, and its active elements were vacuum tubes - about 20,000 of them.
As you might expect, there was a lot of excitement in the electronics, scientific,
and finance world about digital computers that would be inexpensive enough that
individual corporations...
 Werbel Microwave, who since 2014 has designed and produced high
performance radio frequency components for defense, commercial, test and measurement
applications, is seeking an experienced manufacturers' representative firm to cover
the New England territory (CT, MA, ME, NH, RI, VT). Click thumbnail image for more
detail.
We're looking for a rep firm with:
- Established relationships in defense, aerospace, and commercial electronics
OEMs in the region.
- Complementary, non-competing RF/microwave lines.
- A motivated, technically knowledgeable sales team.
If your firm is the right fit, we'd love to connect. Reach out via DM or email
us at
sales@werbelmicrowave.com
 Moods are sometimes understandably less
than jovial and nerves might be shot after a challenging day at work. These
electronics-themed comics from a couple vintage Radio &
Television News magazines might help assuage your anxieties. The same goes
for those who are in Southern California and managed to arrive safely from a commute
on the notoriously unfriendly highways there. As with many of these old comics,
you have to be privy to the mindset of the day to fully appreciate the topic. TV
repair was big business and people were fascinated with the boob tube innovation
rapidly consuming the attention of domestic dwellers...
 Just about everyone who has worked in the
radar field for a long time is familiar with the name of
Dr. Robert M. Page. He was the first to come up with
the concept of monopulse radar, and he invented the familiar Plan Position Indicator
(PPI) radar display and the RF duplexer which allows one antenna to be connected
to both the transmitter and the receiver. Amazingly, I recently received an e-mail
from Dr. Page's son, John Page. An interest in his father's career
combined with insight that only growing up under the loving care of Dr. Page
can provide has afforded him some unique tidbits of information that many (most,
per John) historical accountings omit. Rather than me summarizing his letter...
 Biographical historians spend endless hours
searching old media for bits of information on their subjects. Finding useful material
on more renowned personalities is not a problem, but filtering out relevant bits
for a particular theme can be daunting. On the other hand, finding useful information
on lesser known people can be frustrating because there is so little information
readily available. Great Britain's World War II era superstar
Winston Churchill undoubtedly falls into the former category.
While scanning through my many vintage electronics and science magazines for interesting
fodder to post on RF Cafe, I'm always on the lookout for cameo appearances like
this one of Prime Minister Churchill talking on a walkie-talkie (aka "handie-talkie"
at the time) in this 1942 edition of Radio-Craft...
 Exodus Advanced Communications'
AMP20071 is a broadband 6.0 to 18.0 GHz solid-state power amplifier developed
as a modern alternative to legacy TWT technology for EMI/RFI, EMC, and laboratory
test applications. The amplifier delivers 200 W minimum saturated output power
with 53 dB minimum gain and features a Class A/AB linear design for demanding
RF environments. Excellent gain flatness, built-in protection circuits, and optional
monitoring of forward and reflected power, VSWR, voltage, current, and temperature
provide reliable operation in a compact 7U rack-mounted chassis...
 New:
Rectangular Waveguide Calculator. RF Cafe's spreadsheet-based
engineering and science calculator,
Espresso Engineering Workbook™, is a collection of electrical engineering and
physics calculators for commonly needed design and problem solving work. The filter
calculators do not provide just amplitude, but also phase and group delay (hard
to get outside of a big $$$ simulator). It is an excellent tool for engineers, technicians,
hobbyists, and students. Equally excellent is that Espresso Engineering Workbook™
is provided at no cost, compliments of my generous sponsors. 51 worksheets to date...
 DAS DEALS
Marketplace, RF Cafe's newest supporter, is a B2B-only marketplace, meaning
we exclusively work with established businesses in the telecom, wireless, and
networking industry to buy and sell related products such as cables, antennas,
DAS systems, RF passives, accessories, and test equipment. All submissions are reviewed
and approved before any products are listed. Most products on DAS DEALS can be purchased
directly using a credit card at checkout. Can't find it on DAS DEALS? We probably
know who has it. If you're looking for a product that's not listed on our site,
visit the In-Demand Request page and submit a request.
 I did a little research on this article
about John H. Nelson's work on how the positions of planets affect
magnetic storms on Earth. It looked a little more like astrology
than science, but as it turns out, Nelson's findings gained support in both
the astronomical and meteorological fields. Naturally, the astrology crowd claimed
him as part of their goofiness, but that wasn't Nelson's fault. He published
a book in 1974 titled ,"Cosmic Connections." Yeah, even that sound like an astrology
title - poor choice (or maybe he was trying to fool the contemporary Pharisees in
to buying his book). The book is out of print now, and I could not find any contemporary
work that leverages Nelson's work...
 If you want to know what was really going
on at some point in the past, there is usually nothing more reliable than reading
a print story or advertisement from the era. That way you're getting the news
"straight from the horse's mouth," so to speak, rather than being interpreted
or filtered by some unassociated source. This report on "The Transistor in Industry" was written in 1956 by Mr. Frank
Durat, a product manager at Raytheon, at a time when transistors were first making
inroads for replacing the venerable vacuum tube (valve) which had launched and propelled
the electronics industry since 1908 when Lee de Forest introduced the triode Audion
amplifier. Germanium and silicon were the semiconductor base crystals du jour, and
achieving the requisite purity was a primary concern for advancing the state of
the art for higher frequencies, power handling, and circuit density (for integrated
circuits)...
 My 50-year high school reunion is here.
Tempus fugit. These images were scanned from my 1976 yearbook for
Southern Senior High School in Harwood, Maryland. Only pages with
information on Seniors is included. A full list of all the names that go with these
photos can be found at the bottom of the page. Having them in text format (versus
a photo) will allow search engines to find your name and associate it with Southern
Senior High School. Oh, and yes, all the photos are in B&W; there are only eight
pages with color in the entire book! I used AI to colorize a couple of them - a
technology not even deemed possible in 1976.
 Anytime I see a photo or story about the
1964 New York World's Fair, I immediately think of the scene
at the end of the first "Men in Black" movie when Agents K and J face off with the
alien invader who has come to Earth in search of "The Galaxy." This story from an
April 1964 issue of Electronics magazine reports on preparations made for
the grand opening on April 22 of that year. Based on the typical three to six month
lead time for publishing magazines back in the day, this material would have been
gathered long ahead of time. Of course now that half a century has passed we hardly
consider any of the whiz-band technology presented there as being anything wonderful,
but then half a century from now our grandkids will laugh at what we consider amazing
at the present time. Here is an interesting statement..."
 Welcome to the RF
Frequency Mixers Quiz,
a technical assessment focused on the critical non-linear components that enable
frequency translation in transceivers and test equipment. Whether you are designing
heterodyne receivers, analyzing local oscillator (LO) leakage, or striving to minimize
spurious intermodulation products in your signal chain, a deep understanding of
mixer dynamics is indispensable for high-performance RF design. This quiz covers
the core principles of frequency conversion, exploring topics such as conversion
loss, isolation, port-to-port feedthrough, and the generation of mixing products.
By testing your grasp of these essential concepts, you refine your ability to optimize...
 Albert Einstein declared and proved that
time is relative and depends on the observer's perspective. To someone sixty
years old, the year 1971 seems like it was just yesterday, but to people born a
couple decades ago, it seems like ancient history. Even so, I am taken by surprise
when I read a story from a 1971 issue of Popular Electronics that has produced
a list of "early computers" and it includes models like the ENIAC and Harvard
Mark I. Instinctively, the IBM XT, Apple II, and Packard Bell, and Compaq
lines of personal computers (PCs) come to mind. In 1971, there were no PCs. However,
if you compile a list of antique computers, then the aforementioned names apply.
This article does provide a nice recounting of the evolution of digital computers
from Charles Babbage's mechanical Difference Engine through those vacuum tube-based
electronic computers...
 These two advertisements appeared in the
July 1935 edition of QST. Bliley Electric is still in business here in
Erie, Pennsylvania as
Bliley Technologies. They make crystals and frequency sources.
Gross Radio has been out of business for quite a while. I included it mainly to
illustrated how large radio transmitters used to be - these things were installed
in people's attics and basements back in the day. This particular model, the
CB-100, is a "100-Watt Radiophone & C.W. Transmitter completely housed in an
entirely enclosed floor rack of ingenious design." It operated in the 1.7, 3.5,
7 and 14 MHz bands. For comparison, iCOM makes a 1 kW power amplifier today
covering those bands...
 Dr. Lee DeForest might have had something
like National Public Radio (est. 1970) in mind when he penned this article in 1933.
In it, the famous vacuum tube amplifier inventor lamented and criticized the commercialization
of broadcasts because of all the paid product announcements (aka commercials) that
had been steadily increasing over the years. He also was critical of the "hit-or-miss,
higgeldy-piggeldy mélange program basis" of programing; i.e., the same station playing
a mix of jazz, opera, swing, syndicated story-telling, etc. The good doctor did
not elaborate on where funding for such dedicated, uncorrupted broadcasts would
originate if not from paying advertisers, and I do not recall ever reading about
a DeForest Radio Network paid for by his vast fortune. I don't like commercials
any more than the next person, but a company deserves time to pitch its products
and/or services if it helps deliver a source of entertainment to you that...
 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. 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, such as Hedy Lamarr or the Bikini Atoll, respectively...
 John T. Frye's monthly "Mac's Radio Service Shop" techno-drama, written in story form
- was usually an incognito lesson on circuit functionality or troubleshooting, how
to deal with customers, industry regulations and news, or an introduction to new
components and equipment. As the "Unusual New Equipment" title suggests, this time
Mac described a few new items added to the service shop to aid in their work. Often
when reading one of the episodes, I do a Google search on specific components or
equipment mentioned in the article. He describes a special-purpose CRT (Sylvania's
new 5AXP4 Television Receiver Check Tube) that could be used universally for troubleshooting
in place of a wide variety of installed picture tubes. I found one for sale on eBay
for $39.95. There is not much you cannot find on eBay if you watch long enough...
 This is a different type of
electronics-related quiz from Quizmaster Robert P. Balin.
Mr. Balin created many monthly quizzes for Popular Electronics magazine.
Here you are provided a series of images and a list of men's first names, and you
need to match the image to the name. There are nine in all. Sure, it's kind of hokey
(especially B and I), but it is a good end-of-the-work-day challenge challenge to
help pass the time until the weekend begins...
 While not a second-hand store junkie, I
do like to occasionally make the rounds of the local Salvation Army, Goodwill, and
other independent shops to see what kind of relics are donated. Since eBay, Etsy,
and their kind have gained immensely in popularity, it is getting harder to find
anything useful other than clothes and kitchen wares. A few months ago Goodwill
had a 1910s vintage
cabinet -style Edison disc phonograph (as opposed to wax cylinder)
that was in very good condition, complete with a handful of styli and a couple old
records. The original finish over smooth mahogany and burl veneers had only a few
scratches and could easily be polished to look practically new. The metal hardware
could have stood a fresh coat of black paint due to nearly a century of oxidation.
Even the original nomenclature plate looked factory-new, and a clearly legible paper
plaque...
 Bell Labs, having been responsible for creating
the first positive amplification point contact transistor just before Christmas
1947, continued to lead the way in semiconductor research and new product announcements
for many decades. This little tidbit was tucked away at the bottom of page 120 in
the May 1954 issue of Radio & Television News magazine. It reported on "the
purest substances in the world" being created there in the form of 99.99999999%
(aka 10N)
pure germanium crystals, which are used as seed for growing boules
for device production. That's one rogue impurity atom in ten billion germanium
atoms. Modern monocrystalline silicon boules are typically 7N or better...
|
 This is another example of one of those
advertisements you likely would not see in a modern electronics magazine.
There is nothing fundamentally problematic about its content or message, but politically
correct standards would condemn any depiction of a woman expressing such excessive
appreciation for a man's efforts. It might, after all, convey the idea that
all television antenna servicemen should expect such treatment from all women. It
also implies that only men can be TV antenna servicemen / servicepersons. If that
sounds nutty, well, what can I say. It's the world we live in as evidenced by
news items of late. Keep firmly in mind that what is accepted as a social norm today
might be considered to be a crime in a few decades, so exercise caution in all you
do in the presence of witnesses be it written, videoed, spoken, or acted out...
 According to the Wikipedia entry, Cannon
Electric Company introduced the now-familiar D-Sub (D-subminiature) connector format in 1952. This advertisement in
a 1954 issue of Radio & Television News magazine is the first one I recall seeing.
D-Sub connectors were a really big deal back in the 1980s when personal computers
(PCs) first appeared. CRT monitors used them, printers used them, scanners used
them, network interfaces used them, mice and keyboards used them (those that didn't
use PS/2 connectors, which were an invention of IBM for their Personal System 2
computers). Nowadays the USB (Universal Serial Bus) and HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia
Interface ) connectors have replaced most D-Subs in the computer cable realm. Of
course with everything going wireless, connectors and cables of all sorts are rapidly
disappearing except those used for charging...
 Yeah, I thought the same thing... a "Wamoscope?" Was it produced by the Wham-O toy company that makes
the Hula Hoop, the Frisbee, the Super Ball, and Silly String? Wham-O was founded
in 1948, and this article appeared in a 1956 edition of Radio & Television News
magazine, so why not? Actually, Wamoscope is derived from "WAve-MOdulated oscilloSCOPE."
Developed by Sylvania Electric Products, it combined a traveling-wave tube with
a cathode ray tube in single enclosure. That enabled microwave signals to be fed
directly to the CRT for amplifications and processing. Evidently the idea did not
catch on since the market was never filled with Wamoscope sets. A brochure for Sylvania's
6762 Wamoscope is shown at the bottom of the page...
 This is the first of a two-part series on
the move of the
WWV transmitter stations operated by the National Bureau of Standards
(now called National Institute of Standards and Technology) from Greenbelt, Maryland,
to Boulder, Colorado. WWV Part II appeared in the February 1967 edition of the ARRL's
QST magazine. WWV began transmitting time / frequency standards in 1920
in order to provide a means for remote stations and laboratories to calibrate local
standards that would prevent transmitting stations from interfering with each other.
Although most people don't realize it, the 60 kHz signal that their 'atomic'
clocks and watches use to self-adjust time emanates from the WWVB antenna in Boulder.
This first installment of the article discusses the history and rationale for relocating
the WWV facility...
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