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Copyright: 1996 - 2024 Webmaster:
Kirt Blattenberger,
BSEE - KB3UON
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 typing up your telephone line, and a nice lady's voice announced "You've Got
Mail" when a new message arrived...
All trademarks, copyrights, patents, and other rights of ownership to images
and text used on the RF Cafe website are hereby acknowledged.
My Hobby Website:
AirplanesAndRockets.com
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RCA Test Equipment Advertisement November 1963 Popular Electronics |
November 1963 Popular Electronics
Table of Contents
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.
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I
have to admit to not remembering (or ever knowing) that Radio Corporation
of America (RCA) manufactured electrical test equipment, so seeing this
full-page advertisement in a 1963 edition of Popular Electronics was
a surprise. RCA made a few types of analog multimeter kits, some project
and experimenter kits, and even an oscilloscope kit. A little more thumbing
through other Popular Electronics editions revealed the RCA Institutes,
which was a mail order electronics training program similar to the ITT
Institute and
National
Radio Institute (NRI, from whom I took a course many moons ago). Knowing
that if you wait long enough, just about everything shows up on eBay,
I did a quick check and found a few vintage RCA Institutes items, including
an
RCA Institutes Ham Radio Signal Generator Kit.
On a whim,
I looked on eBay for the
10 MHz oscilloscope kit that came with my NRI course, and there
one was, but it had already been built (on left). I remember that the
time base was calibrated by clipping a ceramic capacitor to the probe
and sticking it in the wall receptacle and adjusting for 16.67 ms.
Amplitude calibration was done by measuring a battery voltage with a
voltmeter and adjusting accordingly. Close was good enough at the time.
See all articles from
Popular Electronics.

Posted 1/6/2013
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