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 Fortunately, there is a constant flow of
people newly interested in electronics who are seeking information on basic principles.
Some will find an article this one on
Ohm's law fundamentals and decide maybe being just a user of
electronics is good enough. Others will, as did you and I, read this kind of
material and be amazed at how ultimately predictable electrical circuit
parameters are. If he or she continues and launches into a career in electronics
or electrical engineering, it won't be long before he or she will, as do you...
 Whilst reading this Carl Kohler technodrama
entitled "Thin
Air My Foot!," I happened upon this word new to me: "din," as in "It was dinned
into me." OK, maybe you already knew that, but surely I should have been aware of
its alternate meaning other than being a loud noise ("the agitated cat made quite
a din."). Fortunately, I am not subject to a household of people who refuse to put
things back in their respective places when through with them, but this tale of
woe tells what might be a familiar scenario to you. To be honest, this could have
been written about me as a boy - before the U.S. Air Force taught me a thing or
two about organization and neatness - since I continually frustrated my father by
leaving his tools (and hardware and lumber and paint) scattered in forgotten places
around the house and yard...
 Antenna radiation (beam) patterns published
by manufacturers are obtained under ideal - or close to ideal - conditions with
a carefully prepared and calibrated open air test site (OATS) or an enclosed anechoic
chamber. Multipath, imperfect earth ground, obstacles both manmade and natural,
misshapen elements, poor VSWR, antenna orientation (in both azimuth and elevation)
are among the many factors which produce real-world operational results that do
not jive with a manufacturer's datasheet. Without employing some far field 3-dimensional
field strength scheme see
Drone-Based Field Measurement System™), there is no way to obtain
a complete picture of how your antenna performs in all directions...
 It has been quite a while since posting a
Carl & Jerry adventure tale. The teenage-neighbors-cum-Ham-radio-operators-cum-electronics-hobbyists-cum-amateur-detectives-cum-pranksters
are the creation of John T. Frye. He published a monthly episode in Popular
Electronics magazine. Mr. Frye is also the author of the
Mac's Radio Service Shop series of instructional stories
that ran in Radio & Television News magazine. This adventure is quite
a digression from the typical storyline in that the boys actually engage in a bit
of deceit in order to save face based on a bet...
 Exodus Advanced Communications is a multinational
RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial
and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. Power amplifiers ranging
from 10 kHz to 51 GHz with various output power levels and noise figure
ranges, we fully support custom designs and manufacturing requirements for both
small and large volume levels. decades of combined experience in the RF field for
numerous applications including military jamming, communications, radar, EMI/EMC
and various commercial projects with all designing and manufacturing of our HPA,
MPA, and LNA products in-house.
 Is
the
BOMARC an airplane or a rocket? If it is an airplane, then it is the pilotless
type (aka "drone"). If it is a rocket, then it is the ultimate in controlled trajectory
hardware - at least in its day. The DoD referred to it as a surface-to-air guided
missile. The name is a combination of "BOeing Airplane Company"
and "Michigan Aeronautical Research
Center." Clever, non? If memory serves me correctly (it's been
30+ years), the AN/TPX-42 IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) secondary radar system
(built by Gilfillan) I maintained as an air traffic control radar technician reserved
a special "X" bit in its data packet to designate the BOMARC - and maybe other guided
missiles. That might have been a military secret at the time...
 "Israel's Iron Beam laser weapon that can
destroy drones for a few dollars 'a pop' are being developed and introduced into
combat service. The Chinese
Hurricane 3000 system is another new weapon developed to tackle the growing
use of drones in combat. However, unlike the laser-based Israeli system, the Hurricane
3000 system uses microwaves to disable drones and drone swarms at ranges exceeding
3 kilometers (1.9 miles). This is a similar weapon to the US Army's Leonidas microwave
weapon, although China claims that the 3000's reported three-kilometer-plus range
is over a kilometer more than the Leonidas system...
 This is interesting. The title for the
General Motors S1B radio says it is a 25-cycle model, as compared
to the S1A, 60-cycle model. According to an IEEE Xplore paper, "At 8:53 PM on 12
October 2006, a 66-kV circuit breaker tripped and locked out at the Harper Substation
in Niagara Falls, New York, due to downed transmission conductors near Buffalo,
New York. That event marked the end of over 111 years of 25-Hz alternating current
(ac) electric power service on the American side of the Niagara Frontier." 25 Hz
was considered a good, low frequency for...
 Here is a good
quiz that tests your knowledge of classifications of science fields.
It appeared in a 1949 edition of The Saturday Evening Post magazine. Even
if you do not particularly know the relationships, you should be able to get most
if not all twelve correct with a combination of surety, recognition of word roots,
and a process of elimination. Good luck...
 ConductRF is continually innovating and
developing advanced solutions for RF cable assembly and various RF through millimeterwave
interconnect requirements. We'll be posting their latest RF cables and technical
articles here at RFcafe.com, but to stay abreast, you're encouraged to visit their
Updates section at https://www.conductrf.com/blog
and sign up for their monthly news releases.
 During the early 1960s, Short-Wave Listening
(SWL) was a remarkably popular era-defining hobby, as enthusiasts worldwide competed
to pull in distant broadcasts from London, Moscow, or Hong Kong. "How
to DX Satellites" challenged these listeners to advance beyond Earth-bound stations
to the ultimate frontier: intercepting signals from orbiting spacecraft. While skeptics
dismissed satellite DXing as impossible due to extreme distances, low power, and
elusive verification, the author maintained it was achievable for those with the
right patience and gear. Successful monitoring required sensitive communications
receivers, crystal calibrators...
 Radio Shack,
like so many of America's original great companies, was born and lived long and
prospered during its glory days, then eventually waned into insignificance and obsolescence
within the last decade or so. It is not always simply an unwillingness to adapt
to new technologies and methods that dooms them. The forces behind those life cycles
are often beyond their control because start-ups vying for market share do not carry
the burden of and have to deal with established investments in people, facilities,
and infrastructure...
 Although obviously (but getting less so)
before my time, the mention of this airborne radar surveillance system having been
built by
General Electric, in Utica, New York, struck a chord since that
is where I had my first engineering job after having graduated from the University
of Vermont with a BSEE degree. It seems to me the work at the time was all done
in the converted textile complex on Broad Street. They were the glory days of GE,
Westinghouse, Collins, Raytheon, and other electronics titans whose engineers, technicians,
assemblers, and program managers...
 The June 1949 issue of Radio & Television
News had four
television-themed comics. Television at that time was a relatively
new home appliance, so there was a huge amount of interest in the technology. It
hadn't really been all that long since the public got used to hearing sound (i.e.,
'talkies') in the movie theater, so the mystique that surrounded television made
it the subject of a lot of puns and jokes. 1949 was a mere four years after the
end of World War II, and the post-war economic boom was primed by a surplus
of left-over electronic components along with lots of available talent both in the
areas of design and assembly...
 Temwell is a manufacturer of 5G wireless communications filters
for aerospace, satellite communication, AIoT, 5G networking, IoV, drone, mining
transmission, IoT, medical, military, laboratory, transportation, energy, broadcasting
(CATV), and etc. An RF helical bandpass specialist since 1994, we have posted >5,000
completed spec sheets online for all kinds of RF filters including helical, cavity,
LC, and SMD. Standard highpass, lowpass, bandpass, and bandstop, as well as duplexer/diplexer,
multiplexer. Also RF combiners, splitters, power dividers, attenuators, circulators,
couplers, PA, LNA, and obsolete coil & inductor solutions.
 Both my father and grandfather were
stamp collectors - philatelists is the technical word - who dabbled
in a recreational way with commemoratives from foreign countries. Nearly all were
canceled (used) stamps that today, as back in their
day, have no real value other than to someone interested in history. Of course none
are the rare types. I now possess many of those stamps in an album that was painstakingly
hand-illustrated and assembled to arrange each stamp according to its country and
issue date. At one time I, too, dabbled in the hobby, having collected many plate
blocks and special issue U.S. stamps in the 1970s and 1980s, along with purchasing
a few designs of special purpose such as those with aerospace and communications
themes...
 Exodus Advanced Communications offers a
scalable portfolio of
high-power solid-state RF amplifiers designed for electronic warfare, GPS/GNSS denial,
and counter-drone applications. These systems are engineered to support high-power
RF denial architectures capable of disrupting control, navigation, and payload links
across multiple frequency bands. Integrated into mobile, fixed, and expeditionary
platforms, Exodus amplifiers enable reliable, long-range electronic attack performance
in complex and evolving threat environments. These solutions are deployed within
high-power RF denial systems across mobile and fixed counter-UAS platforms, as illustrated...
 "Measuring low-frequency electric fields
with high precision remains a significant challenge. Existing sensing technologies
often cannot deliver traceability, compact design, and the ability to detect field
direction all in one system.
Rydberg atoms are gaining attention in electric-field quantum metrology because
they have large electric dipole moments and their behavior can be tied to well-defined
atomic properties. Most current methods for detecting low-frequency or DC electric
fields using Rydberg atoms rely on vapor-cell electromagnetically induced transparency
(EIT) spectroscopy. However, this technique is limited..."
 Here are the
Majestic Chassis Models 380 A.C. T.R.F., and 400 A.C.-D.C. Superheterodyne
and
Delco 32-Volt Radio Receiver Chassis Radio Service Data Sheets
as featured in a 1933 edition of
Radio-Craft magazine. As mentioned many times in the past,
I post these online for the benefit of hobbyists looking for information to assist
in repairing or restoring vintage communication equipment. Even with the availability
of SAMS Photofacts, there are some models that cannot be found anywhere other than
in these vintage magazines...
 For the sake of avid cruciverbalists amongst
us, each week I create a new
crossword puzzle that has a theme related to engineering, mathematics, chemistry,
physics, and other technical words. You will never be asked the name of a movie
star unless he/she was involved in a technical endeavor (e.g., Hedy Lamar). Clues
in this week's puzzle with an asterisk (*) are directly from this week's "High Tech
News" column on the RF Cafe homepage (see the Headline Archives page if necessary)...
 Please take a few moments to visit the
everythingRF website to see how they can assist you with your
project. everythingRF is a product discovery platform for RF and microwave products
and services. They currently have 354,801 products from more than 2478 companies
across 485 categories in their database and enable engineers to search for them
using their customized parametric search tool. Amplifiers, test equipment, power
couplers and dividers, coaxial connectors, waveguide, antennas, filters, mixers,
power supplies, and everything else. Please visit everythingRF today to see how
they can help you.
 In 1961, when these
tech-themed comics appeared in Electronics Illustrated magazine, the
"Space Race" was in full swing. That, along with home hi-fi stereo equipment, newfangled
color televisions, and - gasp - transistors, filled the headlines. They were also
the subject of many forms of humor. These four comics touch on many of those aspects,
all centered on the Space Race. Of course, everything is noticeably dated. "Flunking
the code test" means not much to Amateur radio licensees who earned their first
license (like me, in 2010) after the 5 WPM Morse code requirement was removed. Building
something in "kit form" was a good way to save some money and learn something...
 In our present "No user serviceable parts
inside" world of electronic products, it is easy to understand why very few people
have an appreciation for the technical prowess needed to troubleshoot and repair
them. When reading through these episodes of "Mac's Radio Service Shop" that appeared in mid last century editions
of Radio & Television News magazine, I am inspired to envy the skills
that small electronics repair shop owners had for working on the old vacuum tube
based radio and television sets. Digital electronics has its own unique set of quirks
and special knowledge requirements to troubleshoot, but when everything is analog
rather than merely being required to be a "0" or a "1"...
 "The U.S. Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) has announced that it is once again accepting applications for its
Honors Engineer Program. Initiated in 2018, the one-year development program
gives selected candidates an opportunity to work with FCC personnel on innovative
issues in the communications and high-tech arenas, including 5G communications technology,
the national deployment of broadband services, and communications technologies intended
to improve access to those with disabilities. Those selected to participate in the
Honors Engineer Program will be eligible for continued employment at the agency.
Application to the FCC's Honors Engineer Program is open to recent college graduates
with an engineering degree..."
 This week's crossword puzzle theme is
Amateur Radio. All RF Cafe crossword puzzles are custom made by me, Kirt
Blattenberger, and have only words and clues related to RF, microwave, and mm-wave
engineering, optics, amateur radio, mathematics, chemistry, physics, and other technical
subjects. As always, this crossword puzzle contains no names of politicians, mountain
ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort unless it/he/she
is related to this puzzle's technology theme...
 Submarines first proved their deadly capabilities
during World War II when Adolph Hitler's navy used them to torpedo not just
military ships but merchant ships in commercial trade routes between the Americas
and Europe. Hideki Tojo's navy used subs to conduct surveillance prior to the deadly
surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. Their naturally stealthy environment - underwater
- proved to be a difficult realm both for detection and for attack. Fortunately,
sensor technology developed quickly during the war, and soon a combination of air
and sea based methods were in use and proved very effective. Submariners no longer
sailed in relative security from being treated to a violent, icy burial at sea...
 The leading website for the PCB industry.
PCB Directory is the largest directory of
Printed Circuit Board (PCB)
Manufacturers, Assembly houses, and Design Services on the Internet. We have listed
the leading printed circuit board manufacturers around the world and made them searchable
by their capabilities - Number of laminates used, Board thicknesses supported, Number
of layers supported, Types of substrates (FR-4, Rogers, flexible, rigid), Geographical
location (U.S., China), kinds of services (manufacturing, fabrication, assembly,
prototype), and more. Fast turn-around on quotations for PCB fabrication and assembly.
 As
the Soviet army closed in on the Peenemünde rocket base in March 1945, German engineers
led by
Wernher von Braun initiated a desperate evacuation of their revolutionary research.
Tasked by von Braun, engineer Dieter Huzel organized the transport of tons of top-secret
blueprints and records to avoid capture by the advancing Red Army. Amidst the chaos
of collapsing lines and aerial warfare, Huzel successfully secured the documents
in an abandoned, ironclad mine near Goslar, shielding them from Soviet hands. After
dynamiting the entrance to seal the cache, Huzel and fellow scientists fled westward
to surrender to American forces. Following their successful arrival in U.S. lines,
the location was revealed...
|
 • AI Could End
Online Anonymity (or falsely identify)
• How
Test and Measurement Will Evolve in 2026
• AI
and Geopolitics Forge Memory Market Crisis
• European
Electronics Distribution Gains Momentum
• UK
Secure Quantum Communications Boost
 The
RF Cafe Homepage Archive
is a comprehensive collection of every item appearing daily on this website since
2008 - and many from earlier years. Many thousands of pages of unique content have
been added since then.
 Amateur radio station operators seemed to
always be amongst the first to lose their rights in time of war. Governmental power
brokers - from unelected local bureaucrats on up to presidents - love to demonstrate
their influence over citizens when the opportunity arises. The
Radio Act of 1912 revoked the rights of amateur radio stations to operate, and
in some cases authorized the confiscation of radio equipment for use by the government.
Permission was not restored until 1919, after World War I. Amateurs took it
on the chin again in World War II with revocation of licenses. In this 1917
article in The Electrical Experimenter magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback
makes the case for permitting "our red-blooded boys be trusted to assist our officials
in running down spies." "...we realize how absurd it is to close all privately owned
radio stations during the war," says he. It fell on deaf ears, as usual. As the
now mayor of Chicago once famously said, "You never want a serious crisis to go
to waste..."
 Carl and Jerry were early adopters of the
near field communications (NFC) craze that is going full-swing today. As they often
do, the harmlessly mischievous teenage duo used their combined grasp of modern electronics
to pull off gags on unsuspecting friends ... and sometime adversaries. In this episode,
a near-field transmitter and receiver pair is designed to help Carl bedazzle a scientist
who was attempting to disprove the ability to use "Extrasensory Perception" (ESP)
- the title of this 1956 Popular Electronics magazine technodrama - to determining
what another person was thinking about. In this case it was detecting which playing
card was being displayed on an overhead projector. Of course Carl didn't really
have "the gift," but relied on his co-conspirator, Jerry...
 Windfreak Technologies is proud to announces
the availability of our
FT108, an innovative
programmable bidirectional filter bank spanning a frequency range of 5 MHz
to 8 GHz in 15 bands. Band selection can be controlled through USB, UART or
at high speeds through powerful triggering modes. Each unit is factory tested via
network analyzer with unique data stored in the device to help with its use. Crossover
frequencies are stored so the user can send a frequency command and the FT108 will
utilizes Intelligent Band Selection logic to automatically toggle the optimal
filter path based on minimum insertion loss. Readback of FT108 insertion loss at
any frequency between crossover points allows for easy amplitude leveling...
 If you're a newcomer to the game, it may
seem that radio theory already has enough mystery without adding more. True, the
technical journals - even QST, sometimes - do make it a mysterious subject with
their textbook language and complex notations. Radio isn't really any more mysterious
or complex than many a detective story - at least not after you've read the last
page and know "whodunit." The difference lies in the method of presentation. There
may be some utility, then, in the idea of presenting radio fundamentals in the manner
of detective fiction. That's what this is - a series of radio lessons in the guise
of a detective-mystery yarn. Instead of human characters we'll use another kind
- but we'll try to make the characterizations true and the background and incident
realistic. Our purpose is to divert...
RF Cascade Workbook is the next phase in the evolution of RF Cafe's long-running
series, RF Cascade Workbook. Chances are you have never used a spreadsheet
quite like this (click
here for screen capture). It is a full-featured RF system cascade parameter
and frequency planner that includes filters and mixers for a mere $45. Built in
MS Excel, using RF Cascade Workbook is a cinch and the format
is entirely customizable. It is significantly easier and faster than using a multi-thousand
dollar simulator when a high level system analysis is all that is needed...
 Here is installment #3 of the four sets of reader
submissions of inane remarks (ostensibly) uttered by
electronics-challenged nincompoops. One of the funniest - and even believable - is
about 300-ohm twin lead antenna wire flattening out the picture with color television.
If you have funny anecdotes you would like to have published, send them to me and I'll
be glad to add a few seconds to your lifetime allotment of 15 minutes of fame...
 According to the postscript to this editorial,
Hugo Gernsback wrote his opinion on the then current state of space exploration
and his recommendation for how future efforts should proceed, a month before Alan
Shepherd made his historic suborbital flight aboard the Freedom 7 Mercury capsule.
That May 5, 1961, feat marked mankind's first foray into space. Surprisingly, Gernsback
was not in favor of a
manned space program. He believed the resources and expense required to support
human life in space would be better invested in developing autonomous and remotely
controlled robotic systems. Many people agreed with him then and today. Although
I do not oppose manned space flight, I tend to agree with Gernsback that much more
can be accomplished with machines than with humans. NASA's many successes on Mars
are evidence of the accomplishments possible with robots, and the long-term missions
possible. At some point it might be necessary to explore sending men to other planets,
but there really is no imperative at this time - just a desire to do so. Coincidentally
(or maybe not so coincidentally), Mr. Gernsback refers to his vision of a lunar
probe as "surveyor," which was name of NASA's series of robotic lunar lander probes
deployed...
 Almost certainly the earliest observed evidence
of the existence of an ionosphere as part of the Earth's atmosphere is aurora activity.
Alley Oop, B.C., and friends had no idea that the wavering colors were the
result of high energy, charged particles from our sun interacting at altitude with
the Earth's magnetic field. This article from a 1935 issue of Short Wave Craft
magazine gives a nice introduction to what was known of the ionosphere at the time,
which wasn't a whole lot since no in situ measurements had yet been made via sounding
balloon or rocket. All that was known was inferred from the behavior of radio waves
as they were affected by the charged space. It wasn't until 1926 that Scottish physicist
Robert Watson-Watt coined the term "ionosphere."
Although not mentioned here, it was amateur radio operators who first discovered
the ability of the ionosphere to reflect and bend short wave radio waves to enable
round-the-world communications. Ironically - or perhaps expectedly - the U.S. Congress
in 1912 passed the Radio Act of 1912 that restricted amateur radio operation to
frequencies above 1.5 MHz (a wavelength of 200 meters or less). Shortly thereafter,
the FCC reclaimed much of the spectrum for itself...
 I have often said that some of the most capable
and enthusiastic engineers and technicians - and even managers - I have worked with
in my 30-something year electronics career have been amateur radio operators. They
are the rare few who are able to combine a hobby passion with a profession that
pays for the hobby... kind of like the airline pilot who flies model airplanes or
the druggie who works at a pharmacy. Oh, wait, scratch that last example. Here we
see a video from Chevrolet where two engineers, one of them a Ham, took up the challenge
to replace the
AM/FM whip
antenna originally planned for the 2011 Camaro convertible with a blended, inconspicuous
antenna. Leaked photos of the prototype car showed the whip, which caused Camaro
aficionados to descend upon Chevy requesting its removal. The flexible, folding
rear window prevented...
 Here are the schematics & parts lists
for the
Hoffman model A301 tabletop radio. It was published in the August 1947 issue
of Radio News magazine. I typically run OCR on them to separate the textual
content and include part of that to help the search engines find it. However, this
one did not have any textual description. There are still many people who restore
and service these vintage radios, and often it can be difficult or impossible to
find schematics and/or tuning information. The thumbnail to the left is a pretty
nice example of a Hoffman model A301 tabletop radio currently listed on eBay. I
keep a running list of all data sheets...
RF Cascade Workbook is the next phase in the evolution of RF Cafe's long-running
series, RF Cascade Workbook. Chances are you have never used a spreadsheet
quite like this (click
here for screen capture). It is a full-featured RF system cascade parameter
and frequency planner that includes filters and mixers for a mere $45. Built in
MS Excel, using RF Cascade Workbook is a cinch and the format
is entirely customizable. It is significantly easier and faster than using a multi-thousand
dollar simulator when a high level system analysis is all that is needed...
 This is another installment of the Hams in
Combat series that QST ran during WWII. I enjoy waxing vicariously nostalgic
of a time before I was born, at time when there was still honor, courage, selflessness,
and pride of country. During World War II, it was an ingrained part of most citizens,
whether or not they happened to be serving in the military. Our modern day troops
still have it, but sadly fewer and fewer people see their own country as any place
special in the world. Sure, as General William Tecumseh Sherman famously said, "War
is hell," but then again so is witnessing the tearing apart of your country
from forces within...
 The discussion of waveguides, up to this
point, has been concerned only with the transfer of energy from one point to another.
Many waveguide devices have been developed, however, that modify the energy in some
fashion during transit. Some devices do nothing more than change the direction of
the energy. Others have been designed to change the basic characteristics or power
level of the electromagnetic energy. This section will explain the basic operating
principles of some of the more common waveguide devices, such as
Directional Couplers, Cavity Resonators, and Hybrid Junctions. The directional
coupler is a device that provides a method of sampling energy from within a waveguide
for measurement or use in another circuit. Most couplers sample energy traveling
in one direction only. However, directional couplers can be constructed that sample
energy in both directions...
 You and I know them as 'varactor diodes,' but originally the semiconductor junctions whose
reverse bias determines its capacitance was called the 'Varicap.' The new and wondrous
semiconductor craze was in full swing by 1958. Scientists, engineers, and hobbyists
were burning the midnight oil (to use a popular phrase of
the day) performing experiments and designing circuits to replace vacuum
tubes and manual controls with transistors and other electrically variable semiconductors.
The Varicap had the ability to tune receiver and transmitter oscillators and filters
without the need for high tube bias voltages and large mechanically variable multi-plate
capacitors. This article from Radio-Electronics says early Varicaps cost
$4.50 apiece...
 This "Glass
for Electronics" article in a 1965 issue of Electronics World magazine
provides some really interesting information about the properties of glass which
I, for one, either never knew or have forgotten. One such point is that glass is
typically defined with a "softening" temperature rather than a melting temperature.
That is because the final characteristics of the glass is highly dependent on the
cooling down time/temperature profile. Those of us having been in the world of automated
printed circuit assembly (PCA) solder oven operation are familiar with the criticality
of time/temperature profiles, so the concept is not new. In the case of PCA's, profiling
is necessary to accommodate the often widely varying thermal dimension changes over
temperature to prevent fracturing. With glass, it is the final atomic alignment
(or misalignment) that is dependent on the cooling process, akin to tempering of
metal (although the metal is not heated to the point of liquidus flow). At the time
of this article, Corning Glass Works claimed to have >100k unique formulas for
glass using various mixes of elements...
 Those of you who have or have had a business
where you employed workers can relate to this article which appeared in a 1952 issue
of Radio & Television News magazine. Never having had that responsibility,
I cannot relate directly.
Small business owners I have known have told me about how their first responsibility
is to pay employees before paying themselves, and no one who has never been in that
position can truly relate to it. What I find interesting in these kinds of vintage
articles is the cost of goods and services back in the day, with the help of the
Bureau of Labor Statistics' Inflation Calculator. For instance $100 per week ($5,200/year)
income back in 1952 is supposedly equivalent to $1,024 per week ($53,248/year),
which really is pretty good. I don't know how generous fringe benefits were in 1952
compared to today...
 For twenty years now, I have been creating
weekly crossword puzzles for the education and enjoyment of the technically minded
visitor like you. This
Science Theme Crossword Puzzle for May 23rd has many words and clues related
to RF, microwave, and mm-wave engineering, optics, mathematics, chemistry, physics,
and other technical subjects. As always, this crossword contains no names of politicians,
mountain ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort unless
it/he/she is related to this puzzle's technology theme (e.g., Reginald Denny or
the Tunguska event in Siberia). The technically inclined cruciverbalists amongst
us will appreciate the effort. Enjoy!
 RF Cafe visitor Terry W. wrote to me
about a topic that ended up mentioning RCA's vacuum tube voltmeter (VTVM) known
as the
VoltOhmyst. VTVMs were the era's high-input-impedance multimeter, before FETs
came on the scene. The higher a meter's input impedance, the less it loads the circuit
under test. Any meter connected across a circuit appears as a parallel load to the
source, so the closer it is to an open circuit, the better. Terry mentioned how
the VoltOhmyst was a key component on test benches of many professionals. You can
still buy various models of the VoltOhmyst on eBay. This 1959 Popular Electronics
magazine article reports on the kit version which at the time used vacuum tubes.
Later models sold into the 1970s were solid state. The printed circuit board in
the 1959 model was very avant-garde in a time when point-to-point was still the
norm...
 Little did Hugo Gernsback know when he wrote
this 1938 editorial in his Radio-Craft magazine about the
potential of television just how prescient he was - particularly in the realm
of eventually enabling remote commerce and banking. His vision involved having a
camera-phone type device that would allow real-time interaction between shoppers
and depositors, respectively, without either party needing to meet face-to-face.
76 years later we are not at that point (at least on a widespread basis); however,
the advent of online shopping and banking has fully permitted the kind of impersonal
transactions that Gernsback foresaw. Even with the growing popularity of Skype camera
phones, society still is far from the point where human-to-human transactions are
commonplace. Maybe at the century point (2038, a mere 16 years away) such a system
will be ubiquitous. There are probably some legal hurdles that will need to be resolved... |
