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 The persona of Scott Adams' "Dilbert" is described
exactly in the opening sentence of this article in a 1930 edition of Radio-Craft
magazine. It is amazing - if not frustrating - to realize how long the perception
of science-minded people being introverts has been around. Dilbert's "pointy-haired-boss"
is nailed in the second sentence.
Georg von Arco is celebrated here as a major contributor to the
advancement of early radio, particularly wireless telegraphy equipment development.
Interestingly, as brought to my attention by Melanie as she did the text clean-up
after OCRing the magazine page, von Arco worked at the Sayville radio transmission station on Long Island, New York,
where the Telefunken Company's Dr. K.G. Frank was arrested and interred for
the duration of the World War I for sending out "unneutral messages...
 Lots of Hams still use this tried-and-true
system for
tuning antennas for efficient operation on a variety of bands.
There are plenty of multi-band designs that rely on traps to reactively isolate
portions of the antenna that properly resonate at the desired frequency, but there
is usually a price to be paid in VSWR. Poor VSWR; i.e., higher mismatch loss, can
be overcome with higher transmitter output power, but the real sacrifice for poor
matching is loss of receiving range. The utter simplicity of using an insulated
cord to vary the physical length of the antenna element(s) for tuning is hard to
beat. It could be impractical on a setup where access to the antenna mount is difficult,
but my guess is most people can make good use of it...
 In this 1958 Popular Science magazine
article titled "Russian
Proposes Global TV," Soviet engineer V. Petrov proposed a global TV relay using
three geosynchronous satellites at 35,800 km altitude, launched 120° apart from
the equator at ~6,000 mph to match Earth's 24-hour rotation. Fixed over sites like
the USSR, China, and USA, they would relay signals - uplink on meter waves, downlink
on microwaves - via inter-satellite links, enabling worldwide broadcasts beyond
line-of-sight limits with directional antennas mitigating solar interference. Each
would require 10-kW antenna power, potentially reduced via pulsed transmission (note
digital waveforms in the drawing). This closely mirrored Arthur C. Clarke's 1945
Wireless World article "Extra-Terrestrial Relays," which...
 Frequency crowding has evidently been an
issue since the early days of radio according to this 1930 article in Radio-Craft
magazine. The situation was really bad in the earliest times when unfiltered spark
type transmitters were the norm. Those pioneers could be credited, I suppose, with
being the first users of wideband communications, but it was not because they chose
to do so. Here author Clyde Fitch discusses the debate over whether there really
were such things as sidebands from modulation and makes an argument for their existence
based on analysis of various types of modulation. In particular, he predicts the
coming popularity of single sideband receivers with crystal-filtered channels, and
the need for matching SSB transmitters with... wait for it... carrier and sideband
suppression...
 "A new transceiver developed by electrical
engineers at the University of California, Irvine boosts radio frequencies into
140-gigahertz territory, unlocking data speeds that rival those of physical
fiber-optic cables and laying the groundwork for a transition to 6G and FutureG
data transmission protocols. To create the transceiver, researchers in UC Irvine's
Samueli School of Engineering devised a unique architecture that blends digital
and analog processing. The result is a silicon chip system, comprising both a transmitter
and a receiver, that's capable of processing digital signals significantly faster..."
 Somehow, after being in the RF business
for four decades, I have to admit to not being familiar with the term
"acceptance angle" for antennas. That is after having read scores
of articles on antennas. Maybe I did and just don't remember - embarrassing. Acceptance
angle is mentioned and explained in this article during the description of rhombic
antenna characteristics versus dipoles and multi-element designs. Although the author
focuses on television installations, information provided on signal reflections,
shadowing, ghosting, multipath, etc., is applicable to radio as well...
 Electrolytic capacitors have long been the
components that provide the highest capacitance density factor, that is, they have
the highest capacitance value for a given volume of space occupied. Anyone familiar
with electrolytic capacitors is aware of the polarization indicated on the package
(a marking or unique physical feature), indicating that there is required direction
for hookup; in fact, a backwards connection can lead to an explosive failure. While
physical construction of electrolytic capacitors have evolved over the decades since
this article was published, the fundamental operation has not. It is interesting
to note the reference to capacitors as "condensers," a name still commonly used
with internal combustion engine ignition systems and with some AC motors that use
them at turn-on for providing a starting coil phase shift...
 This 1959 Popular Science magazine
reprint of a 1925 Radio News magazine article focused is on visionary physicist
Robert H. Goddard's proposed Moon Rocket as a means to test
whether radio waves can traverse interstellar space, potentially enabling communication
with other planets. Amid recent radio achievements, including mysterious signals
during Mars' approach and solar disturbances recorded on Earth, the piece challenges
Oliver Heaviside's theory that radio waves are confined by Earth's atmosphere. Goddard's
innovative rocket, propelled by successive explosive charges to escape gravity and
reach the Moon, would carry a compact radio transmitter in its nose cone, broadcasting
signals throughout its flight. Astronomers would track...
 This week's
crossword puzzle, as with all RF Cafe puzzles, uses only words
pertaining to engineering, science, mathematics, mechanics, chemistry, astronomy,
etc. You will never find a reference to some obscure geological feature or city,
or be asked to recall the name of some numbnut movie star or fashion designer. You
will, however, need to know the name of a famous RF filter design software author.
Enjoy...
 "Broadband achromatic wavefront control
plays a central role in next-generation photonic technologies, including full-color
imaging and multi-spectral sensing. A research team led by Professor Yijun Feng
and Professor Ke Chen at Nanjing University has now reported a significant advance
in this field in PhotoniX. The researchers introduced a hybrid-phase cooperative
dispersion-engineering approach that combines Aharonov-Anandan (AA) and Pancharatnam–Berry
(PB) geometric phases within a single-layer metasurface. This strategy enables
independent achromatic control of wavefronts for two different light spin states..."
 As with the article in this month's issue
of Radio-Craft magazine (December 1937), the reference to a 200th anniversary
is understated by 88 years for 2025.
Luigi Galvani was sort of the Benjamin Franklin of biology in
that just as Franklin demonstrated that lightning was a form of electricity, Galvani
showed that signals sent from the brains to the appendages of animals were electrical
in nature. In my high school days in the 1970s, we duplicated his experiment by
making deceased frogs' legs twitch when motivated by a D cell. Today, such an exercise
would likely be met with demonstrations by animal rights people (whose lives, BTW,
have probably in some way been improved as a result of previous such experiments).
But, I digress. Mr. Galvani's name is...
 Superheterodyne receivers were originally
the sole domain of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which owned the patents
and refused to license them until around 1930. Hugo Gernsback, a contemporary editor
of the era, provides a little insight into the superregenerative receiver circuits
superheterodyne was about to replace, and why it was an important improvement in
technology. Sidebar: The question often
arises regarding the difference between a "heterodyne" circuit and a "superheterodyne"
circuit. The most popular answer that "super" refers to the IF being located above
the range of human hearing, which peaks at about 15 kHz. Doing so assured that
any IF leakage into the audio circuits would not be discernable by a radio...
 Carl and Jerry stories are usually a good
mixture of teenage curiosity, adventure, and electronics technology, but this "Out
of the Depths" episode is a bit too far-fetched. The first ninety percent of
this 1957 Popular Electronics magazine tale fulfills expectations, with
the boys applying their shared interest in technology while attempting to learn
and apply the technique of luring elusive fish from their safe dwelling places and
onto the ends of their hooks. A car battery, DC-to-AC inverter, tape recorder, and
high-gain microphone are the basis for the scheme. Things were going well, and I
expected the normal hard-fought victory with big, fat bass in their creels - and
then something only slightly more believable than finding a crashed alien spaceship...
 RCA, the
Radio Corporation of America was not merely a manufacturer of
radio, television, and phonograph equipment for home entertainment. The company
also made vacuum tubes for all sots of electronic equipment, and produced a weekly
radio broadcast called "Magic Key" on the NBC Blue Network. Sticking to their communications
roots, RCA today markets televisions, microwave ovens, Android-based tablet computers,
DVD / Blu Ray drives, telephones, 2-way radios, radios, clocks, antennas, and many
other devices - with no tubes in sight, not even in their TV displays...
 "Scientists at the University of New Hampshire
are using artificial intelligence to dramatically speed up the search for
new magnetic materials. Their approach has produced a searchable database containing
67,573 magnetic materials, including 25 previously unknown compounds that retain
their magnetism at high temperatures, a key requirement for many real-world applications.
'By accelerating the discovery of sustainable magnetic materials, we can reduce
dependence on rare earth elements, lower the cost of electric vehicles and renewable
energy systems, and strengthen the U.S. manufacturing base,' said Suman Itani, lead
author of the study..."
 Breaking News!
Espresso
Engineering Workbook™ v3.2.2026 has just been released. This makes the 49th
worksheet added. It calculates magnitude, phase, and group delay for Butterworth
and Chebyshev lowpass, highpass, bandpass, and bandstop filters. Outside of the
kilobuck simulators, finding a calculator for phase and group delay is extremely
difficult - believe me, I've searched extensively for years. Espresso Engineering
Workbook™ can be downloaded free of charge. All you need is Excel™ v2007 or newer.
It is provided compliments of my advertisers. Contact me if you would like your
company added to the next release.
 Disneyland opened its gates in Anaheim,
California on July 17, 1955. It was billed as the most high-tech theme park in the
world, with a "wow" factor on par with the World's Fair extravaganzas. One of its
much-ballyhooed features was the "realistic" jungle safari tour with life-like animal
automatons and authentic 3-D jungle sounds. This article, published less than a
year after opening day, highlights some of the equipment and methods used by artists
and engineers to achieve the effects...
 Established in 1990,
dB Control supplies mission-critical,
often sole-source, products worldwide to military organizations, as well as to major
defense contractors and commercial manufacturers. dB Control designs and manufactures
high-power TWT amplifiers, microwave power modules, transmitters, high- and low-voltage
power supplies, and modulators for radar, ECM, and data link applications. Modularity
enables rapid configuration of custom products for a variety of platforms, including
ground-based and high-altitude military manned and unmanned aircraft...
 You will love the irony at the end of this
Carl Kohler technodrama. It appeared in the June 1957 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine. I'm not going to spoil it by even hinting at the conclusion - only that
the story follows the familiar path of the dauntless husband-electronic-hobbyist
taking off on another of his somewhat hair-brained ideas, while "friend-wife" looks
on. Her self-restraint is tested, as usual - although she jabs with some uncharacteristically
harsh zingers this time. Have you noticed how men are expected to be self-deprecating
in situations in order to create humor? The technology here was considered bleed-edge
back in the day. BTW, I fed the husband's humor bait to AI and it came up with some
pretty good responses - like what had been expected by him. AI came up with
a long name for FUNIAC (clearly a play on names like UNIVAC and ENIAC)...
 "The Whistler
and His Dog" is one of those tunes that you have probably heard dozens of times
but never knew the title of it (video at bottom of page).
It is mentioned in this installment of "Mac's Radio Service Shop" from a 1948 edition
of Radio & Television News magazine. Barney is said to have been whistling
it while replacing an output transformer on a receiver-recorder... a wire recorder
at that. The "20 Questions" theme is from the game where the player attempts to
guess the answer by asking a series of questions that narrows the possible results
until only the correct one is left - aka deductive reasoning. BTW, I'll bet "The Syncopated Clock" is another tune you've
heard many times but didn't know the title of it...
 Have you noticed how many wooden utility
poles are
bending under the load of communications cable weight they were never designed
to withstand? Some are ridiculously burdened - and it is not "engineered deflection"
for line tension changes. Power companies want to charge the communications companies
for pole and/or cross bar replacement and/or upgrading, but the FCC just ruled that
pole owners cannot charge the full cost of replacement. That financial deficit,
of course, gets passed on to electric power customers. You wonder why your monthly
bill has skyrocketed in the last few years? That is part of it - along with
us peoples subsidizing wind and solar generation, and paying for free Internet and
cellphones to half the population (including Illlegals). Do you fell violated? I
do.
 Radio-Craft magazine solicited inputs
from its readers for a series of "Radio
WittiQuiz" questions and answers related to radio and electronic, with a stipulation
being that there had to be some aspect of humor included. That meant that some of
the multiple choice answer options needed to be inane. For most of the questions,
the process of elimination is pretty easy, but a couple could cause some head scratching
- especially if you are not really sure of the answer. This group starts at number
28, so obviously preceding issues had questions 1 through 27. At some point I will
probably acquire them and post other Radio WittiQuizzes...
 Having never been a sports aficionado, I
have not spent much money or time at baseball, football, or soccer fields, hockey
rinks, bowling alleys, curling sheets, or basketball courts. When an air show comes
to town, however, I'm there. I'll stand in line for 45 minutes to tour the inside
of a DC-3, B-25, B-17, PBY-5, or just about anything that will admit me. What is
particularly enjoyable is inspecting the radio equipment racks and bays. The sight
and smell (I consider it an aroma) of the old UHF
and VHF sets, recording equipment, power supplies, generators, synchros, and the
associated wiring and connectors is something I never tire of experiencing. I always
imagine the men who operated and maintained everything doing their assigned duties
to keep those wonderful machines flying...
|
 • China's
BeiDou Satellite (their GPS) Does Emergency Messaging
• How & When Will
Memory Chip Shortage End?
• At Age 25, Wikipedia
Refuses to Evolve
• Amazon Leo Asks FCC for
Satellite Launch Extension
• FCC Gives
Amazon OK for 4,500 More Satellites
• China
Memory Producers Race to Exploit Shortage
 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.
 It seemed like a reasonable idea, but the
absence of "One Hander" soldering tools on the market today - or any time
in the last half century for that matter - is empirical proof that the concept is
not feasible. In principle, being able to feed the solder into the joint area with
a squeezable pistol grip setup is not so different than modern wire welding machines
that basically do the same thing (I have one). It was probably the lack of stiffness
of the solder wire that caused the problem since keeping it on the joint would be
difficult. Preventing the flux from jamming the solder feed tube was no doubt an
issue as well. Oh well, it was worth a try. Today's surface mounted components could
never be soldered with such a device, even if modernized to accommodate the smaller
sizes...
 Each week, for the sake of all avid cruciverbalists
amongst us, I create a new
technology-themed crossword puzzle using only words from my custom-created
lexicon related 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 Lamarr or the Bikini Atoll, respectively. Enjoy!...
 Here is an amazingly detailed article on
how to construct and operate a near-lab-quality
impedance bridge out of relatively inexpensive components. It appeared in a
1944 issue of QST magazine. A bridge is used to determine the precise value of a
resistor, capacitor, or inductor. Prior to modern, easily affordable digital impedance
meters, both amateurs and professionals relied on such devices for lab and field
work. Why might you need to measure the value of a component when most are marked
with a value? One common application is when a variable version of a component (or
components) is soldered into the circuit while tweaking for optimal performance,
and then the variable is replaced either with a single fixed component or a fixed
component with a smaller-range variable component. It is not uncommon when doing
the initial tuning on a complete home-built transceiver to have many variable components
in place initially, and then solder in fixed versions later...
 RF Cafe visitor Vince S. saw the "Barney
Turns Inventor" episode of "Mac's Radio Service Shop" series recently posted here
which told of Barney's idea for a vacuum tube tester that would set all the switches
and voltages based on a coded card for the particular tube type. That story appeared
in a 1950 issue of Radio & Television News magazine. I don't know when Hickok
came out with their first
"Cardmatic" tube tester, but as Vince noted in his message to
me, the idea might have been borne of John Frye's fictional scenario. This
full-page advertisement for the Hickok Model 121 High-Speed Portable Cardmatic Tube
Tester comes from the March 1958 issue of Radio & TV News. A YouTube
video of a Model 121 Cardmatic is included below...
 While listening to the radio the other day, I
heard a guy who is very technically astute and is a Ham radio operator pronounce
the word "schematic" as skem-E-at-ik. He wasn't just joking because he kept saying
it that way throughout the show. It came to mind while posting this chapter entitled,
"The
Electrical Circuit Diagram," and I thought you might appreciate it (especially
if you also routinely mispronounce the word). But I digress... The U.S. Navy over
the years has produced a number of series of training courses for electricity, communications,
mechanics, navigation, etc., that are held in high regard by the military and private
industry. Graduates of the courses who served a term of enlistment performing equipment
maintenance have always been preferred by employers looking for high quality technicians...
 When I first began designing circuits in
the 1990s using
active filters, the upper frequency was limited to a few tens
of kHz because of the gain-bandwidth product of the available amplifiers. That made
them useful in baseband circuits, but that was about it. There were also issues
with the noise figure and intercept points and intermodulation product levels. Today,
you can get fully integrated and programmable active filters which operate at tens
of MHz and beyond, and with much better RF-type specifications. That makes them
useful in low intermediate frequency (IF) circuits as well as at baseband. BTW,
this article is one of about ten dealing with filter types in...
 Here are a few more electronics-themed comics
from magazines of the days of yore. Radio-Craft readers submitted ideas
for funnies and then artist Frank Beaven would draw the comics based on their ideas.
Some months had no comics, and others had half a dozen or more. This June 1945 issue
had three. There is also one from the May 1946 Radio News. You website
visitors not familiar with vacuum tube construction might need to know that the
jailhouse bars in "Control Grid" comic are an allusion to the wire mesh type element
in tubes that modulated electron flow from the cathode to the anode. I once again
colorized the comics to make them more attractive. Enjoy.
 The newest release of RF Cafe's spreadsheet
(Excel) based engineering and science calculator is now available -
Espresso Engineering Workbook™. Among other additions, it now has a Butterworth
Bandpass Calculator, and a Highpass Filter Calculator that does not just gain, but
also phase and group delay! Since 2002,
the original Calculator Workbook has been available as a free download.
Continuing the tradition, RF Cafe Espresso Engineering Workbook™ is
also provided at no cost,
compliments of my generous sponsors. The original calculators are included, but
with a vastly expanded and improved user interface. Error-trapped user input cells
help prevent entry of invalid values. An extensive use of Visual Basic for Applications
(VBA) functions now do most of the heavy lifting with calculations, and facilitates
a wide user-selectable choice of units for voltage, frequency, speed, temperature,
power, wavelength, weight, etc. In fact, a full page of units conversion calculators
is included. A particularly handy feature is the ability to specify the the number
of significant digits to display. Drop-down menus are provided for convenience...
 I was born in the era of screw-in glass
fuses in household electric service panels. There was always a supply of replacements
in the cabinet above the stove. Sometime around 1978, prior to enlisting in the
USAF, I replaced the fuse panel with a Square D circuit breaker panel - a skill
learned through four years of electrical work. In the Air Force, I worked on a 1950s
era air traffic control radar system which consisted of many chassis assemblies
having fuse holders on their front panels. The racks themselves had a circuit breaker
panel, but it was a retrofit from sometime in the early 1970s. That was my introduction
into the wide variety of cylindrical glass fuses - high and low voltage, normal-,
slow- and fast-blow, time delay, etc. I learned of the reason why circuit designers
employed each type, and always used exact replacements when possible. Later, as
a circuit and systems design engineer myself, I always was careful to specify the
most
appropriate fuse type. This 1960 article in Radio-Electronics magazine
is a good primer on fuse handling...
 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...
 For many years, Popular Electronics
magazine had a monthly column titled "Transistor
Topics" that reported on news in the world of those newfangled semiconductors.
To wit, this article from the April 1960 edition begins, "Each month, more and more
transistorized consumer products are developed as replacements for vacuum-tube designs."
The Heathkit TCR-1 clock radio is featured for its six-transistor superheterodyne
AM receiver circuit. A mechanical clock is still used since other than using Nixie
tubes, digital displays were not commercially available. The MOBIDIC "super" computer
is also covered for its total transistorization. At about 4 feet wide and 6 feet
tall, it is hard to believe that the "MOB" portion of the acronym stands for "mobile"...
 This
Electronics theme Christmas Crossword Puzzle for December 24th has many words
and clues related to RF, microwave, and mm-wave engineering, optics, mathematics,
chemistry, physics, and other technical subjects, along with a holiday message.
There is also a holiday greeting contained within. 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!
 This gives a whole new meaning to "Political
Science." Vaccinated people have been generating and shedding variants of COVID-19.
WHO designates each new variant with progressive letters in the Greek alphabet,
beginning with Alpha. Until a few days ago they were up to the Nu variant. Next
came Omicron. "What
happened to Xi?" you might reasonably ask. It so happens that Xi (Jinping) is
the name of China's dictator, so "the Science" we are admonished to listen
to decided to omit it. Now we need the Ministry of Truth to replace all former references
to Xi (Ξ, ξ) with some other symbol. Let me be the first to suggest a spiked
virus icon  . Damping ratio henceforth
is written as = 2.5
rather than the traditional ξ=2.5. Similarly there is the
baryon (rather than the Xi baryon),
the Riemann function, potential difference is
volts, the Scientific Research Honor Society
is now Sigma . You get the idea...
 "Technically,
panoramic reception is defined as the simultaneous visual
reception of a multiplicity of radio signals over a broad band of frequencies.
In addition, panoramic reception provides an indication of the frequency, type
and strength of signals picked up by the receiver. Deflections or 'peaks'
appearing as inverted 'V's on the screen of a cathode-ray tube." It is the kind
of display that radar operators at Pearl Harbor were using when they mistook
wave of incoming Japanese bombers a squadron of B-17s from the mainland. The
panoramic receiver is not a wartime development, experimental models having been
produced just prior to the outbreak of war. However, the many uses to which it
has been put have demonstrated that the panoramic idea, particularly in the form
of adaptors which may be connected to any receiver, is going to be very
important...
 If you are not in the habit of listening
closely to the words of songs, you could easily miss the the fact that many make
passing mention of topics on
science and mathematics,
while others integrate it as the primary theme. There are a lot of songs written
and produced by people whose primary vocation is in the sciences; their songs are
a secondary "hobby" type of endeavor - often with a touch of humor. Don't miss Tom
Lehrer's incredible "Elements Song."
Other songs are created by mainstream popular groups and happen to integrate themes
of science, mathematics, engineering, etc. One of the earliest examples I can recall
noticing was produced by the Moody Blues - "The Word." At the time, I did not fully
appreciate the profoundness of the lyrics in terms of how they described the electromagnetic
spectrum in its entirety, but an examination of the lyrics (below) reveals the profundity
of the words...
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...
 Calibrated noise diodes are fairly inexpensive
these days and are widely used for measuring noise figure of systems and for generating
specific signal-to-noise ratios when testing receiver performance. This article
from a 1967 edition of the ARRL's QST magazine describes a method for using
a "hot resistor," aka "monode,"
as a noise reference source. When the temperature (T) and the resistance (R) is
known, a noise power can be calculated with a precision limited by the precision
of the T and R measurements. In this case the tungsten filament of a pilot lamp
is used as the resistor. Interestingly, if you do an Internet search for the term
"monode," the only thing that returns are references to this article. Per the author,
"The term 'monode' is derived from vacuum-tube terminology, a monode being a one-element
vacuum tube..."
 The International Microwave Symposium (IMS)
is arguably the largest single annual event for radio and microwave engineers. According
to IMS2014 event officials the show in Tampa, Florida, boasted of a 7,500-visitor
attendance. European Microwave Week (EuMW) runs a close second place at around 7,000.
In 1958, 55,000 engineers attended the
Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE - eventually became the IEEE) in New York
City. IMS and EuMW would love to have numbers like anywhere near that. Maybe the
large number of attendees was because dissemination of information was not nearly
as instant (or eventual for that matter), and the absence of the Internet or even
e-mail or online bulletin boards made face-to-face and face-to-product encounters
a vital means of keeping abreast of the latest technology and regulations. Hot topics
like Electronics in Space (on the verge of reality then), and what caught my attention
was this: "Luminescent panels for flat-tube television were discussed by Sylvania
engineers," which coincided with discussions of plasmas. Was that early large screen
TV technology... |
