Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles
from Popular Electronics,
published October 1954 - April 1985. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.
Hobnobbing with Harbaugh
was a fairly regular feature in Popular Electronics magazine in the 1950
and 1960s, compliments of Dave Harbaugh. His cartoon themes touched on issues and situations of the day, mostly
dealing with, as you might expect, electronics. Many of them take place in an electronics
service shop or a sales floor. Harbaugh was an equal opportunity exploiter of dumb
acts by both workers and customers. My favorite of these four from the August 1961
issue is the guy servicing the Japanese chassis. A close second is the portable
TV gag; it took a moment to realize what is going on in the comic. The short-order
repair service is pretty clever as well. The forth comic is a little too inane to
even be funny, but that's just me. I took the liberty of colorizing these comics,
as I have been doing with many of them. Color in magazines was a rare commodity
even in 1961.
"One resistor, coil on the side, heavy on the solder."
"This is as portable as you can get."
"He's testing some Japanese equipment."
"No, no, Madam, the cord just goes in one ear."
Posted October 12, 2023
These Technically-Themed Comics Appeared in Vintage Electronics Magazines. I
personally scanned and posted every one from copies I own (and even colorized some).
275 pages as of 5/13/2026.
RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools"
in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide
me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing
my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet)
was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity.
Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line,
and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...
