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News Briefs
November 1963 Radio-Electronics

November 1963 Radio-Electronics

November 1963 Radio-Electronics Cover - RF Cafe[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.

In November of 1963, when this "News Briefs" column appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine, the world was in frenzied competition to be "the first" in scores of technical realms, from radio and television (FM and color, respectively), home entertainment, deep space and planetary (and lunar) exploration, transportation, medical equipment, and industrial mechanism, to name a few. The U.S. emerged from World War II as the dominating force, but other countries did not sit idly by without meaning to develop and assert their own capabilities - to the benefit of everyone, ultimately. "New TV Sees the Invisible" exploits electronic sensors' ability to detect wavelengths beyond the visible spectrum, similar to how your cellphone camera can detect regions into both infrared and ultraviolet. I remember the "wow" effect of early iPads and iPhones having an IR display mode that could be used to display heat gradients. No place in the public's conscience was the transistor's usurpation of the vacuum tube's domain than in home entertainment. GaAs semiconductors were being explored as viable means of microwave amplifiers and oscillators. The transistorized IBM 7090 computer was used to simulate a satellite tumbling in orbit. Of course, it all looks routine today, with $100 game consoles exceeding the performance of nearly every aspect of these reports.

News Briefs: 11/57 | 8/58 | 11/59 | 2/60 | 4/60 | 8/60 | 9/60 | 10/60 | 12/60 | 1/61 | 3/61 | 5/61 | 6/61 | 7/61 | 8/61 | 9/61 | 10/61 | 11/61 | 12/61 | 1/62 | 2/62 | 3/62 | 4/62 | 5/62 | 7/62 | 8/62 | 9/62 | 10/62 | 11/62 | 3/63 | 4/63 | 6/63 | 8/63 | 9/63 | 11/63 | 2/64 | 3/64 | 7/64 | 8/64 | 12/64 | 8/64 | 9/64 | 1/66 | 3/66 | 8/66 | 9/66 | 1/67 | 3/67 | 4/67 | 5/67 | 6/67 | 7/67 | 9/67 | 3/68 | 4/68 | 5/68 | 8/68 | 9/68 | 1/69 | 11/69

News Briefs

News Briefs, November 1963 Radio-Electronics - RF Cafe

Standard TV camera which cannot see hydrogen flame - RF Cafe

TV set at left is blank except for the small flame detected by the infrared camera. Middle picture is from standard TV camera which cannot see hydrogen flame. Two pictures are superimposed on monitor at right, which shows that a fire exists and pinpoints its location.

New TV Sees the Invisible

A detection system for the invisible fire of liquid hydrogen has been announced by General Dynamics/Astronautics. Liquid hydrogen, which supplies nearly 40% more power than conventional propellants, used to be considered too dangerous for rocket fuel, but it's now being used in the Centaur space vehicle, and other vehicles are being designed to use the high-energy fuel. The device that detects the invisible flame of burning hydrogen is another step toward increasing its usability. The warning system uses a special lens which focuses infrared radiation on the vidicon tube of a TV camera. Beside the infrared camera is a standard camera, both covering the same field of view. The infrared picture, revealing the fire only, is superimposed over the scene viewed by the standard camera, displaying visually the location of the fire. This system is expected to be used at hydrogen test facilities, around launching areas for hydrogen-fueled rockets and possibly as fire surveillance equipment aboard space vehicles.

Illegal CB Operator Faces Several Charges

Warren J. Currence of Elkins, W. Va., was arrested last August for alleged operation of an unlicensed citizens radio station. He was held under $1,000 bond for appearance before the grand jury, and three CB transmitters were seized.

Currence had earlier been charged with using obscenity on the air, and his citizens radio license was revoked. This was the result of complaints "by hundreds of Citizens Band licensees" in central West Virginia.

If found guilty of transmitting obscenity over the citizens band, Currence is subject to a maximum penalty of $10,000 fine or not more than two years imprisonment, or both. And, if convicted of transmitting after his license had been revoked, he faces a like fine or imprisonment not exceeding one year, or both.

Ampex's complete home-entertainment system - RF Cafe

Ampex's complete home-entertainment system has: an AM-FM stereo tuner; a record changer; a stereo control-center-and-pre-amp; a 4-track tape record-play-back machine; a built-in stereo speaker system; color television: video tape recorder good for 90 minutes of TV recording; a vidicon camera that can be used with the recorder or with the TV set directly; two microphones for stereo recording; and a timer to preset the video recorder to take down a program without attention, or to record one while another is being watched. Total ac-line current drain is 12 amperes! An Ampex engineer is part of the deal for as long as it takes to supervise installation.

Lunar Vehicle to Precede Astronauts - RF cafe

Lunar Vehicle to Precede Astronauts

The odd-shaped vehicle is an exploration vehicle, designed by the Westinghouse Defense Center to make the arrival of astronauts on the moon safer, and to make the work more useful. It would arrive before the astronauts and roam the surface of the moon to locate landing sites for manned vehicles. Stereo television cameras would scan the moon's surface and transmit images back to earth. The little wheel ahead of the vehicle detects crevices, and is also designed to collect samples of the surface for analysis.

Transistors in Ascendant at New York Hi-Fi Show

Transistors in almost very form and in nearly every kind of circuit were the hit of the 1963 High Fidelity Music Show, held September 11-15 in New York City.

The show, billed by the Institute of High Fidelity, its sponsors, as "the largest to be staged by the industry", was attended by more than 25,000 persons.

Emphasis was placed this year on decorative aspects of hi-fi. Several exhibitors' rooms were sumptuously furnished to show how well a stereo system could fade into the woodwork, and there was a gallery of photographs of installations from around the country.

But among the displays of 83 manufacturers all over the world, transistor equipment was probably the most prominent. For the first time, several major manufacturers (Sherwood, Scott, Fisher and Pilot among them) exhibited all-transistor equipment.

The prize for the most expensive single piece of home entertainment equipment must surely go to Ampex for its "Signature V", a $30,000 colossus in a 9-foot long walnut cabinet which, besides the usual AM-FM stereo tuner, changer and tape recorder, contains a color television set, a video tape recorder and a self-contained TV camera. (See photo above.)

Other highlights included comparisons of live and recorded music, some of it composed especially for the show.

Magnet May Become Kitchen Tool

Green tomatoes, exposed to the south pole of a large magnet, ripen several days faster than nonmagnetized tomatoes, say Dr. A. A. Boe and Dr. K. Salunkhe of Utah State University.

Starting with green tomatoes, they exposed one group to the south pole of a magnet. These tomatoes were almost red in 11 days, while the nonmagnetized tomatoes were barely pink.

Magnetism's effect on organic substances is not a new idea. Louis Pasteur experimented with tartaric acid a century ago, concluding that the earth's magnetic field altered the arrangement of atoms in molecules.

Three years ago, magnetism was found to spur the growth of germinating seeds. This effect was named "magnetotropism." Its cause, Drs. Boe and Salunkhe suggest, is that a magnetic field quickens an enzyme system and thus respiration.

DC Through GaAs Generates Microwaves

Microwaves can be generated by passing electric current through a block of gallium arsenide at room temperature, reports J. B. Gunn of IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center. The gallium arsenide maser has produced as much as 1/2 watt output at 1 gc,. and oscillations have been produced from 0.5 to 6.5 gc.

Mr. Gunn discovered the effect while measuring the room-temperature resistivity of n-type gallium arsenide as a function of applied electric field. He found that resistivity increased abruptly at a field of about 2,000 volts/cm, and the current passing through the smaller samples began to oscillate coherently at high frequency.

The phenomenon depends to a great extent on the length of the specimen. Specimens longer than about 0.02 cm produce random oscillations, while the frequency of coherent oscillations in the shorter specimens is inversely proportional to their length.

Engineers Sometimes Slighted, Says NASA Spokesman

Scientists too often get credit for work done by engineers, said Dr. Hugh L. Dryden, NASA's Deputy Administrator, to the New Jersey Society of Professional Engineers.

"Engineers are only too rarely associated in the press with the great accomplishments of recent times," he said, referring to the atomic bomb, nuclear power plants and satellites.

Computer Makes Movies for Satellite Research - RF CafeComputer Makes Movies for Satellite Research

An ingenious way of visualizing the motions of an orbiting communications satellite has been worked out by Bell Labs scientists, to help in studies of such satellites. An IBM 7090 is programmed to generate a tape containing the data necessary for describing positions and attitudes of the orbiting satellite. This tape is then fed to a General Dynamics/ Electronics SC 4020 recorder, which converts the digital data into line drawings on the face of a special cathode ray tube. Images on the face of the tube are photographed by a motion picture camera. The film, when projected, depicts the motion of the satellite yawing and turning over, and showed how undesired motion can be prevented by positioning the gyro stops properly.

These closely-spaced drawings (left) of a domino-shaped box, projected rapidly one after another, produce a moving picture showing how the box would orbit in space. The figure at center represents the earth.

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