Electronics-Themed Comics
August 1963 Radio-Electronics

August 1963 Radio-Electronics [Table of Contents] Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Radio-Electronics, published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.

These three electronics-themed comics appeared in the August 1963 issue of Radio-Electronics magazine. The subjects are things at the forefront of most peoples' minds in the day, but are either completely unknown to the current generation and long-forgotten by nearly everyone else. It's only people like me (and maybe you) who like to wax nostalgic about life during what we perceive as a simpler existence with less social craziness and greater personal freedoms. The comic on page 46 is pretty clever, but it could just be that the artist was inspired by the concept of a horizontally polarized magnetic loop - or a simple wire loop - antenna. Electronic kit building (p96) was a big thing with hobbyists both because of the satisfaction that results when your efforts are rewarded with a functioning radio or TV or multimeter or other such device, and because at the time it was often less expensive than purchasing a factory-built model. Kits often contained higher quality components than what came in ready-to-use equivalents, so they lasted longer, and if they did fail, your familiarity with the construction and operation made them easier to align and/or repair. To understand the page 99 comic, you'd have to have battled with trying to stabilize the picture on a vintage IC-free TV when the sync went kablooie.

Electronics-Themed Comics

Page 46

"What did you do with C16?"
Page 96

"Horizontal jitters, my eye! I'm calling the Vet!"
Page 99

Posted June 29, 2023