Attempts at making an
electronically printed facsimile (fax) of an original document at a location
distant from the source have been around for quite a while. As mentioned by
Radio-Electronics magazine editor Hugo Gernsback in this article, Samuel Morse
had a crude working device for printing messages on paper even before his eponymously
named code of dots and dashes became famous in 1837. A couple decades earlier, a
fellow named John Redman Coxe, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, devised a method of
electronically printing images and text on paper using a conductive solution and
a direct current pile (aka battery). Dr. Coxe, a physician, is not a well-known
figure in the electronics world, but in his day...
"Researchers have discovered how the 'edge
of chaos' can help electronic chips overcome signal losses, making chips simpler
and more efficient. By using a metallic wire on a semi-stable material, this method
allows for long metal lines to act like superconductors and amplify signals, potentially
transforming chip design by eliminating the need for transistor amplifiers and reducing
power usage. A stubbed toe immediately sends pain signals to the brain through several
meters of axons, which are composed of highly resistive fleshy material. These axons
operate using a principle known as the 'edge of chaos,' or semi-stability, enabling
the swift and precise transmission of information..."
The January 1969 issue of Electronics
World magazine published an extensive list of
Japanese company trade names and their addresses. Many of them went out of business
or were bought by other corporations long ago, as occurs in all countries. "Aiwa"
is listed twice, but that might have been a legitimate duplication due to separate
locations (BTW, I owned an Aiwa stereo at one time). My first "real" cassette tape
deck was made by TEAC (founded in 1953 as the Tokyo Electro Acoustic Company) and
my first "real" stereo receiver was made by Sansui. I remember the line in "Back
to the Future 3" where Doc Brown, having time-travelled from 1955, makes a
disparaging remark about a circuit in the DeLorean failing because of it being labeled
"Made in Japan." Marty counters...
• ARRL Defends
902-928 MHz Amateur Radio Band
• FCC's
Auto Safety Spectrum Rules
• $5M in U.S.
Chips Act Money to Metrology Projects
• U.S. State Department Approves
Surveillance Radar System Sale to Romania
•
5G Americas ITU IMT-2030 Vision for 6G White Paper
John Redman Coxe was a prominent American
physician, scientist, and innovator born on September 20, 1773, in Philadelphia.
Coxe's intellect and curiosity drove him toward an illustrious career in both medicine
and early scientific exploration, which included experimentation in electrochemistry.
He graduated with a degree in medicine in 1794, setting the course for his lifelong
journey into medicine and early scientific innovation. Coxe broadened his approach
to medicine and science, inspiring him to explore the convergence of scientific
methods and practical applications. John Redman Coxe is most remembered not only
for his contributions to medicine but also for his interest in experimental physics,
particularly in the field of electrochemistry...
TotalTemp Technologies has more than 40
years of combined experience providing thermal platforms.
Thermal Platforms are
available to provide temperatures between -100°C and +200°C for cryogenic cooling,
recirculating & circulating coolers, temperature chambers and temperature controllers,
thermal range safety controllers, space simulation chambers, hybrid benchtop chambers,
custom systems and platforms. Manual and automated configurations for laboratory
and production environments. Please contact TotalTemp Technologies today to learn
how they can help your project.
When I saw this 1966 Radio-Electronics
magazine article entitled, "Vibration
and Shock - Nature's Wrecking Crew," for some reason the first thing I thought
of was "The Wrecking Crew," that anonymously played the music for a huge number
of popular singers - mostly those without prominent bands of their own during the
1960s and 1970s rock-and-roll era. ...but I digress. My introduction to the potential
deleterious effects of vibration on electronics was in the 1970s, with airborne
receivers and servos in my radio controlled model airplanes. Even though they were
transistorized, vibration from glow fuel engines could wreak havoc with potentiometers
in servos and solder joints everywhere, including battery packs. I remember seeing
the control surfaces jitter...
You don't see jobs advertisements like this
anymore. Here is an ad that appeared in the the July 1944 edition of QST
(the American Radio Relay League's, ARRL's, monthly magazine), placed by Raytheon
Manufacturing Company (now just Raytheon Company), looking for
vacuum tube design, test, and processing engineers. Licensed amateur radio operators
were in high demand during the war years because of their knowledge and enthusiasm
for electronics and wireless communications. I hope you didn't come to this page
hoping to really find a tube designer job available. Of course, there are still
vacuum tubes being designed for TWTs and magnetrons, but those are few and far between...
The "carborundum"
signal detector, an innovative device developed by engineer General H. H. C. Dunwoody
in the early 20th century, represents a significant advancement in radio technology,
particularly in the context of crystal detectors used for receiving radio signals.
This device utilized the unique properties of silicon carbide, also known as carborundum,
which was synthesized in the late 19th century by Edward Goodrich Acheson. The connection
between Dunwoody and the material lies in the application of carborundum as a semiconductor
in radio signal detection. The operational theory of the carborundum signal detector
is rooted in its ability to rectify alternating current (AC) signals. When radio
waves, which are essentially electromagnetic waves...
"Researchers have created a cutting-edge
structure by placing a very thin layer of a special insulating material between
two magnetic layers. This new combination acts as a quantum anomalous Hall insulator,
significantly broadening its potential use in developing ultra-efficient electronics
and innovative solar technology. A Monash University-led research team has found
that a structure featuring an ultra-thin topological insulator, sandwiched between
two 2D ferromagnetic insulators, transforms into a large-bandgap quantum anomalous
Hall insulator. This heterostructure opens the door to ultra-low energy electronics
and even topological photovoltaics..."
This is another of a series of articles
on
printed circuit boards (PCBs) that appeared in the October 1969 issue of Electronics
World magazine, reporting on the latest and greatest advances in printed circuit
board technology. Already in production were rigid multi-layer laminates, flexible
plastic laminates, and special-purpose laminates for hazardous duty applications.
Author Norman Skow does not mention how many layers were routinely accomplished
at the time. Plated-through holes were a relatively recent thing for high volume
manufacturing. Of course population of PCB components was still a completely manual
procedure since pick-and-place machines were still a couple decades away...
This "Beyond
the Transistor" article by Hugo Gernsback, which was printed in a 1963 issue
of Radio-Electronics magazine, had as its subject not the transistor in general,
but specifically its potential use as a low noise, high sensitivity radio frequency
signal detector. Mr. Gernsback does a useful historical review of signal detectors,
beginning with Heinrich Hertz's radio detector in 1888, then progressing through
Edouard Branly's 1892 coherer, Gustave-Auguste Ferrie's and Reginald Fessenden's
electrolytic detector of 1903, then Greenleaf Pickard's crystal detector in 1906.
Lee de Forest's early work on vacuum tubes was directed toward a signal detector,
and ultimately resulted in his Audion amplifier. In 1948, Bell Laboratories' Shockley,
Brattain and Bardeen...
"Researchers have developed a groundbreaking
method to create more compact and energy-efficient computing devices using
magnonic circuits. By utilizing alternating currents to generate and steer spin
waves in synthetic ferrimagnetic vortex pairs, this new approach promises significant
advancements over traditional CMOS technology, potentially leading to the next generation
of computing systems. The central processing units (CPUs) in our laptops, desktops,
and phones rely on billions of transistors built with CMOS technology. As the demand
to shrink these devices..."
Édouard Eugène Désiré Branly was born on
October 23, 1844, in Amiens, France, into a period of scientific curiosity and rapid
technological advancement. Raised in a family that valued education, Branly's early
years were influenced by the intellectual currents of the 19th century, which likely
fostered his keen interest in the sciences. His father, a modestly situated man,
encouraged Branly's education, though little is known about his mother or other
family members. Details about Branly's immediate family are sparse, including whether
he had siblings, and historical records reveal little about his personal family
life regarding a wife or children, suggesting that Branly...
Withwave is a leading designer and developer
of a broad range of RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave test solutions and subsystems
with a focus on electromagnetic field analysis and signal processing. Withwave's
new
High-Speed & Micro-Miniature Board-Board Connectors (HMB) are hermaphroditic
mating interface and offers good RF characteristics for high-frequency applications
such as 5G Millimeter-Wave. The hermaphroditic mating design contributes to a very
cost-effective solution. Frequency range: DC to 50 GHz, pitch: 0.35 mm,
mated height: 0.6 mm-width: 2.48 mm, number of pins: 8, 16...
The invention and development of the
coherer
marked a transformative moment in radio signal detection, facilitating the transition
from theoretical studies of electromagnetic waves to practical wireless communication.
Developed in the 1890s, the coherer is widely attributed to Édouard Branly, a French
physicist whose experiments with metal filings in a glass tube led to a device that
could detect electromagnetic waves. His discovery showed that when exposed to such
waves, the metal particles cohered or clumped together, changing their electrical
resistance. This effect allowed a current to pass through the coherer, indicating
the presence of a radio signal. Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge...
When I first read the title for this article,
"A
Look at the PC Market," I was thinking personal computers, not printed circuits.
It being from a 1972 issue of Popular Electronics magazine, my assumption
was that the photos of circuit boards were from early kit format computers, but
then it finally dawned on me that there were no personal computers in 1972 - not
even in kit form. Actually, that is not entirely true since there were advertisements
for hokey contraptions called "computers" that combined some switches, logic gates,
and LEDs for implementing simple multiple choice true/false testing boxes or rudimentary
(with emphasis on "rud[e]") calculators...
Even when you understand (or at least think
you understand) the physics principles behind them, some things still seem to be
"wrong." Two of those things involve the creation of cold from room temperature
materials. Both involve separating hot and cold, then transporting the hot part
to one area and the cold part to another. One involves molecules of air, the other
electrons of semiconductors. This 1962 Radio-Electronics magazine article
covers the latter, while the former refers to a compressed air "vortex tube." I
first saw a vortex tube in the Genderson Chevrolet body shop (now defunct), in Annapolis,
Maryland, where I worked part-time as a handyman while in high school in the mid-1970s.
The article refers to the
Seebeck and Peltier effects, which separates electrons from holes (a deficiency
of electrons). A higher density of electrons results...
I heard a piece on the radio this morning
about
China copying designs of American companies having hardware built there using
stolen molds and technology, then selling knock-off versions on Taobao, Alibaba,
etc. Here is an interesting Forbes article on
Chinese cybertheft: "Something interesting and potentially alarming has been
surfacing in my conversations with manufacturers recently. Drawn to China by cost
savings for years, many leaders are beginning to rethink their presence not because
of rising tariffs or as part of efforts to reshore - legitimate factors themselves,
of course - but due to cybersecurity concerns. Manufacturers must be diligent to
track risk and take meaningful action to protect themselves..."
Crystalonics is not a name that immediately
comes to mind when thinking about semiconductor manufacturers. They appear in this
1969 article in Electronics World magazine about
power field effect transistors (FETs). Many semiconductor companies came and
went in the last days of vacuum tube active devices, but Crystalonics - good for
them - was not one of them. Surprisingly, a Google search revealed that Crystalonics
was alive and well in Ronkonkoma, New York, until sometime after August of 2024.
Their website is now defunct. From their About Us page: Formed in 1958, CRYSTALONICS
is a broad line semiconductor manufacturer of Small Signal...
Exodus Advanced Communications, is a multinational
RF communication equipment and engineering service company serving both commercial
and government entities and their affiliates worldwide. We are pleased to announce
the model
AMP2121-LC, a high-power RF amplifier system covering 80 to 1000 MHz. It
produces 2000 W minimum output, with >1750 W P1db, and has excellent
band flatness with a minimum power gain of 63 dB. Included are amplifier monitoring
parameters for forward/reflected power in dBm & watts, VSWR, as well as voltage,
current and temperature sensing on a large color touchscreen for optimum reliability
and ruggedness, with unprecedented performance in a single cabinet...
Here are a couple
tech-themed comics that appeared in the October 1969 issue of Electronics
World magazine. The one I like best has two guys applying for a patent on their
computers. Note the size difference. It portended the future of microcircuits. Of
course the mother-in-law comics are always funny and were common back in the day.
This one literally superimposed the hi-fi fad of the era with the mother-in-law
jab. There is a huge list at the bottom of the page of links to other comics I have
posted over the years. BTW, people have asked why I separate the text from the image.
The answer is simple: If someone finds the image using an image search, he/she has
to actually visit the webpage to get the punch line. Does that make me a bad person?
|
Isaac Newton famously said, "If I have seen
farther it is from standing on the shoulders of giants." His statement was figurative,
of course, but I can now say literally that I have stood on the shoulders of a giant.
Somewhere recently, I don't recall where, I read that although American Radio Relay
League (ARRL) founder
Hiram Percy Maxim was born in New York and spent most of his adult life in Connecticut,
he was buried in Rose Hill Cemetery located in Hagerstown, Maryland. That just happens
to be where Melanie and I stop a couple times each year to visit her mother. We
lived there ourselves for about three years in the early 1990s. That day, I surely
stood if not exactly atop Mr. Maxim's shoulders, then very nearly so as I maneuvered
to take this picture of his grave marker. Why is he buried in Maryland, you might
ask? That is where his wife's family's burial plot is located. Mrs. Maxim was the
daughter of former Maryland senator and governor William T. Hamilton. Hamilton,
in fact, helped establish the Rose Hill Cemetery in the mid 1880s...
Bell Labs' first positive gain semiconductor
amplifier was of the point contact type where the n-type germanium base contact
was conductively bonded to a metallic plate and the emitter and collector connections
were made by point contact "cat whiskers." Such a contact is not mechanically robust
and would not be a long term solution to semiconductor manufacturing. This full-page
advertisement appearing in a 1958 issue of Radio & TV News magazine touts Bell
Labs' development of a
thermocompression wire bonding process whereby the combination of heat and concentrated
pressure causes an atomic-level reaction between the semiconductor material and
a gold interconnect wire. It proved to be very effective and reliable and paved
the way for greater circuit density and packaging diversity (plastic and ceramic
encapsulation vs. metal cans). Thermosonic wire bonding...
Empire of the Air: The Men Who Made Radio
is a quite interesting documentary about the struggle that Edwin H. Armstrong
- inventor of the superregenerative and superheterodyne circuits, and of wideband
frequency modulation (FM) - had with Lee DeForest - inventor of the Audio amplifying
tube - and David Sarnoff - CEO of Radio Corporation of America (RCA). Extensive
legal battles ensued between Armstrong and DeForest over vacuum tube patents, and
Sarnoff's transition from biggest cheerleader to biggest thwarter of Armstrong's
efforts are epic. A huge amount of historical information and vintage film clips ...
If you need a cheap, quick
lightning arrestor for your antenna or just about any type of wired system,
this idea from Mr. Burgess Brownson looks like a good idea. He used an automotive
spare plug. Voltage breakover points can be set by varying the spark gap distance.
The old vacuum tube transmitters and receivers had a better of chance of surviving
a lightning strike because the components were able to handle much more of a shock
than our modern semiconductor sets with miniature, closely spaced components. Still,
the spark plug setup is better than nothing, if for no other reason than to protect
the shelter. it should suffice. This and many more "kinks" are offered in this 1935
issue of Short Wave Craft magazine...
Our two intrepid techno-sleuths,
Carl Anderson and Jerry Bishop, are in college by now, but that does not keep
them from applying their well-honed mystery solving skills to hometown situations
while on spring break. The boys invoke the scientific method of Mr. R.R. Dibble,
a New Zealand scientist, to help prove to county commissioners that a certain part
of their critical infrastructure was in need of repair. An nth-generation farmer's
observation was not proof enough, so indisputable empirical data would be needed.
Real-life inventors and company's unique instruments are often incorporated into
the Carl & Jerry series by John T. Frye that ran for many years in Popular
Electronics...
With more than 1000
custom-built stencils, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio Stencils
available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings! Every stencil
symbol has been built to fit proportionally on the included A-, B-, and C-size drawing
page templates (or use your own page if preferred). Components are provided for
system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, schematics, test equipment, racks, and
more. Page templates are provided with a preset scale (changeable) for a good presentation
that can incorporate all provided symbols...
One sure giveaway to the age of a picture
is the presence of a wheat penny, a buffalo nickel, or a Mercury dime. This 1957
advertisement in Radio & Television News magazine for
Channel Master antennas has all three. It shows a walking Liberty half dollar
as well. Quarters haven't changed much over the years, with George Washington's
head on the obverse side since 1932. The wheat penny design ended in 1959 when the
Lincoln Memorial was put on the reverse side in its place. Thomas Jefferson's head
has been on the nickel since 1938. Theodore Roosevelt's head was ensconced on the
obverse of the dime in 1946. John F. Kennedy was placed on the half dollar obverse
in 1964. This ad is about antennas, not coins, though. For a lot, if not most, of
RF Cafe visitors, there has always been cable and satellite television. For some,
TV has always been available on their smartphones...
All
RF
Cafe quizzes would make perfect fodder in employment interviews for technicians
or engineers - particularly those who are fresh out of school or are relatively
new to the work world. Come to think of it, they would make equally excellent study
material for the same persons who are going to be interviewed for a job. This quiz
is based on the information presented in High-Frequency Integrated Circuits, by
Rosin Voinigescu.
Here is an advertisement by Corning from
the May 29, 1948, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. The Hale 200-inch
telescope mirror was dedicated for service at
Mount Palomar on June 3, 1948, at the in honor of George Ellery Hale. As a side
note, it is interesting that in the magazine of the era (which were typically quite
large in width and height), actual photographs like this one were rarely used in
advertisements. The vast majority of artwork was... artwork - pencil drawings or
actual paintings. Tomorrow a new door to the secrets of the universe will be gin
to open. A door through which astronomers will be able to see 6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
miles into space...
This vintage
Heathkit
AR-1250 Stereo Receiver kit is one the latest Heathkit kits which appeared on
eBay, although this one is mostly built. At least you can see the innards in the
photos. There appears to be a lot of parts to assemble, but by 1985 Heathkit was
shipping kits with major RF circuit components already mounted and tuned. Without
photos of the unassembled kit I cannot be sure, but being declared "a four-evening
kit" means it likely did have pre-assembled sections. I have been saving these kinds
of images in order to preserve the history. A constantly growing list is at the
lower right. The first instance of the AR-1250 Stereo Receiver I could find in a
Heathkit catalog is in the 1985 Spring-Summer issue with a price of $349.95, but
by the time the 1985 Christmas issue was mailed, the price had been lowered to $299.95
($745.61 in 2021 money per the BLS Inflation Calculator)...
Jules Antoine
Lissajous was a French mathematician who in the days before oscilloscopes concerned
himself with patterns (waveforms) that would be generated as the result of two separate
functions (signals) driving both the x- and y-axes. Lissajous used mechanical vibration
devices connected to mirrors to bounce light beams onto a projection surface, so
his results were not merely hand-drawn plots on graph paper. He was probably as
mesmerized with them as we are today when they appear. Sci-fi movies have used Lissajous
patterns in the background to 'wow' the audience into thinking it is witnessing
futuristic, cutting-edge technology. When troubleshooting analog circuits, it is
very advantageous to have seen and recognize many different types of waveforms so
that you have a better chance of picking out patterns ...
At least 10 clues with an asterisk (*)
in this
technology-themed crossword puzzle are pulled from this past week's (7/9 - 7/13)
"Tech Industry Headlines" column on the RF Cafe homepage. For the sake of all the avid
cruciverbalists amongst us, each week I create a new technology-themed crossword puzzle
using only words from my custom-created related list to engineering, science, mathematics,
chemistry, physics, astronomy, etc. You will never find among the words names of politicians,
mountain ranges, exotic foods or plants, movie stars, or anything of the sort. You might,
however, see someone or something in the exclusion list who or that is directly related
to this puzzle's theme, such as Hedy Lamar or the Bikini Atoll, respectively. Enjoy!...
Here is another of John Comstock's crossword
puzzles from a 1960s issue of Electronics World magazine. His "Name-the-Scientist"
puzzle, as the title suggests, draws mostly on your knowledge of men who are very
familiar to anyone who has been in the electronics game for a while. There are a
few not-a-name words, but they are related to somebody's name. Mr. Comstock
must have been really fond of one guy since he and his invention appear multiple
times in various forms. I have to admit to missing 17 Down, but then at least recognizing
the name after seeing it in the answer key.
This assortment of custom-designed themes
by RF Cafe includes T-Shirts, Mouse Pads, Clocks, Tote Bags, Coffee Mugs and Steins,
Purses, Sweatshirts, Baseball Caps, and more, all sporting my amazingly clever "RF Engineers - We Are the World's Matchmakers"
Smith chart design. These would make excellent gifts for husbands, wives, kids,
significant others, and for handing out at company events or as rewards for excellent
service. My graphic has been ripped off by other people and used on their products,
so please be sure to purchase only official RF Cafe gear. I only make a couple bucks
on each sale - the rest goes to Cafe Press. It's a great way to help support RF
Cafe. Thanks...
Banner Ads are rotated in all locations
on the page! RF Cafe typically receives 8,000-15,000 visits each
weekday. RF Cafe
is a favorite of engineers, technicians, hobbyists, and students all over the world.
With more than 17,000 pages in the Google search index, RF Cafe returns in
favorable positions on many types of key searches, both for text and images.
Your Banner Ads are displayed on average 225,000 times per year! New content
is added on a daily basis, which keeps the major search engines interested enough
to spider it multiple times each day. Items added on the homepage often can be found
in a Google search within a few hours of being posted. If you need your company
news to be seen, RF Cafe is the place to be...
While
FM broadcasting (frequency modulation) began in the United States in the late
1930s, it was not until after World War II and even the Korean War, in the
1950s, that the major shift to FM took place. It took even longer for FM to get
a foothold in Europe mainly due to the emphasis on rebuilding essential infrastructure
and manufacturing destroyed by the war. As this article points out, the newer FM
radio features allowed it to thwart some of the propaganda efforts of the Soviets
in East Germany who would be stuck in technologies that lag two or more decades
behind the free world even to this day (ain't Communism / Socialism great?). The
"medium-wave band" referenced herein is AM (amplitude modulation), so replacing
dominant radio broadcasting with FM systems would effectively cut off AM propaganda.
FM radios were being produced so inexpensively in the U.S. that they were very affordable
in Europe was well. There is no mention of whether the West German government subsidized
the purchase of FM receivers by citizens...
Here is a Christmas-themed "Carl & Jerry" episode from the December 1958 issue of
Popular Electronics magazine. Carl and Jerry, if you are not familiar with
them, are a couple electronics-savvy teenagers who, in the style of "The Hardy Boys,"
manage to get involved in a series of criminal investigations. With headquarters
based in their parent's basement, the two friends cobble up strategies and contraptions
for snaring bad guys, bedazzling unsuspecting neighbors and classmates, and assisting
people in need of techno-capable assistance. They have quite an impressive collection
of test equipment and radio gear at their disposal per the one drawing herein. In
this episode we are introduced to the word "osculation." If you already knew its
definition, you're one up on me...
This is the electronics market prediction for
Russia, circa 1966. It was part of a comprehensive assessment by the editors of
Electronics magazine of the state of commercial, military, and consumer
electronics at the end of 1965. Then, as now, Russian electronics products are
not considered to be serious competition to U.S. markets. For that matter, when
is the last product of any type you bought with a "Made in Russia" stamp on it?
Even though the Soviet Iron Curtain fell in 1992, very little progress has been
made with mending fences with them. Unless you can find a news story on the
state of the industry, detailed reports must be purchased from research
companies...
Beginning in 2000, I have created hundreds
of custom
electronics-themed crossword puzzles for the brain-exercising benefit and
pleasure of RF Cafe visitors who are fellow cruciverbalists. The jury is out on
whether or not this type of mental challenge helps keep your gray matter from
atrophying in old age, but it certainly helps maintain your vocabulary and
cognitive skills at all ages. A database of thousands of words has been built up
over the years and contains only clues and terms associated with engineering,
science, physical, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry, etc. You will never find a
word taxing your knowledge of a numbnut soap opera star or the name of some
obscure village in the Andes mountains. You might, however, encounter the name
of a movie start like Hedy Lamarr or a geographical location like Tunguska,
Russia, for reasons which, if you don't already know, might surprise you...
"Portable" is a matter of perspective when
it comes to large systems. Anything that can be put on wheels and moved over land
is technically portable, but the speed at which it can be brought into operation
once relocated is what really defines whether something is portable or not. To be
truly portable, all of the requisite support equipment must travel with it; e.g.,
electric generators, fuel, water, food, personnel facilities (if needed), etc. The
MPN-14
portable airport surveillance radar (ASR) and precision approach
radar (PAR) unit I worked on in the USAF truly qualified since it was entirely self-contained
and the necessary power generators were supplied by a separate shop within the 5th
Combat Communications Group to which I belonged. Other shops provided creature comfort
facilities, ground-based and satellite radio communications, tactical air navigation
(TACAN), security, and managerial services. A few times each year we had what were
called "Healthy Strikes" where claxons would sound in the barracks...
When you hear or read "satellite television," you naturally think of a service like DISH
Network or DIRECTV. When encountered in a 1956 Radio & TV News article, you
know "satellite" must mean "(3) someone or something attendant, subordinate, or
dependent." Such was the case for satellite TV locations in areas where, without
a network of microwave relay towers, communities situated where geography inhibited
standard VHF and UHF broadcast signals from reaching sets with sufficient power
were left with no or frustratingly poor reception. Home-based satellite TV as we
know it today began in the mid 1970s with Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting
Network broadcast. Artifacts of that ancient time can still be spotted in rural
areas: 10-foot-diameter dishes with eyeballs, smiley faces, or camouflage patterns
painted... |