|
 Nationwide commercial
television broadcasting companies wasted no time stringing coaxial
cable and microwave towers from sea to shining sea once the NTSC format standard
was adopted and manufacturers had spooled up production after World War II.
Adoption of cable services was slow because a fee was involved, but once purely
cable channels started being added the perceived value increase convinced consumers
to open their wallets. Eventually cable eclipsed over-the-air broadcasts for all
but extremely rural areas that were not serviced by cable. Along came satellite
TV to take care of filling that void. Once a small, inexpensive, unobtrusive Ka-band
antenna replaced the huge S-band backyard parabolic dishes and subscription prices
dropped significantly, suburbanites and city dwellers picked it up. Soon, cable
companies were feeling the pinch as their customer bases shrunk. Not ones to sit...
 A lot of RF Cafe visitors might not be familiar
with some of the electronic waveforms presented in this
Oscilloscope Quiz by Popular Electronics magazine's ultimate quizmaster, Robert
Balin. The shapes are recognizable to anyone who has done a lot of design, troubleshooting,
testing, or alignments on analog circuits. Electronics repairmen were intimately
familiar with these - and much more complex - waveforms. Modulation of the z-axis
is especially cool as it varies the intensity of the waveform. I always roll my
eyes when, back in the day, a laboratory or medical facility in movies or on TV
had an oscilloscope display with a Lissajous pattern writhing on the display...
 "SpaceX is putting its longstanding focus
of sending humans to Mars on the backburner to prioritize
establishing a settlement on the Moon, founder Elon Musk said Sunday. The South
Africa-born billionaire's space company has found massive success as a NASA contractor,
but critics have for years panned Musk's Mars colonization plans as overambitious.
The move also puts Musk in alignment with U.S. President Trump's shift away from
Mars. "For those unaware, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing
city on the Moon, as we can potentially achieve that in less than 10 years, whereas
Mars would take 20+ years. Difficulties in reaching Mars include the fact that "it
is only possible to travel to Mars when the planets align every 26 months..."
 Life for the blind has always been fraught
with obstacles that we who can see will never be able to fully appreciate. Society
has come a long way in accommodating the special needs of those with no or severely
reduced eyesight. Recent news stories report of experiments with electronic implants
that use implants set into the eye and couple somehow with the retina to send image
information to the person's brain. While in no way close to being able to be called
sight, it has at least allowed the guy or girl with training to detect and avoid
obstacles based on changes in scenery shading. We are probably a century away from
true bionic vision, incremental improvements will thankfully improve
the lives of our thusly challenged brethren. This article from a 1947 edition of
Radio News reports on efforts made by the New York Institute for the Educations
of the Blind to make amateur radio...
 everythingRF, a long-time supporter of this
website, is now, in addition to publishing e-books, putting out an
e-zine which provides
some insightful content, interesting products and expert interviews within the RF &
Microwave industry. Vol. 4, now available, includes articles on Next Gen Adjustable
Q-Band Gain Equalizers, Earth to Orbit:The Important Role of Antennas in NTN, Benefits
for Phased Array Systems Through SM Components, as well as product features, upcoming
industry events, and more.
Download it now.
 Have you ever heard of a
"globar" resistor? They have been around since the early days
of radio and were used, among other things, to protect vacuum tube heater elements
from burning up due to high inrush current when first turned on. Globars have a
negative temperature coefficient (NTC) of resistance so that, opposite of standard
carbon and metal film type resistors, they exhibit a higher resistance when cold
than when hot. Mac and Barney discuss their use in this episode of "Mac's Radio
Service Shop." You might be more familiar with the name "thermistor" for such devices,
but globars are unique elements in that their construction from non-inductive ceramic
material makes them useful at high power levels and high frequencies. Globar appears
to now be owned by Kanthal (aka Kanthal Globar). Interestingly, Keysight Technologies...
 Louis Garner was the semiconductor guru
for Popular Electronics magazine in the 1960s when he wrote this article
attempting to
demystify the proliferation of over 2,000 transistor types. He devised a "transistor
tree," tracing evolution from the obsolete point-contact transistor - unstable with
high gain but noisy - to advanced designs balancing cost, frequency, power, and
reliability. It covers pnp and npn basics, then details processes: grown-junction
(inexpensive, good high-frequency); meltback diffused (similar, better response);
alloyed-junction (popular for power); surface-barrier family (SB, SBDT, MA, MADT;
excellent high-frequency, low voltage); post-alloy-diffused...
 "Gentlemen,
ei*π
+ 1 = 0 is surely true, it is absolutely paradoxical; we cannot understand
it, and we don't know what it means. But we have proved it, and therefore we know
it must be truth." - Benjamin Peirce
(not to be confused with Captain Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce), 19th century Harvard mathematician.
ei*π
+ 1 = 0 i, BTW, is known as
Euler's identity
- engineers live by it.
 "Scientists have shown that
twisting a crystal at the nanoscale can turn it into a tiny, reversible diode,
hinting at a new era of shape-engineered electronics. Researchers at the RIKEN Center
for Emergent Matter Science, working with collaborators, have created a new technique
for building three-dimensional nanoscale devices directly from single crystals.
The approach uses a focused ion beam instrument to precisely carve materials at
extremely small scales. Using this method, the team shaped tiny helical structures
from a topological magnetic material made of cobalt, tin, and sulfur, known by its
chemical formula Co3Sn2S2..."
 I am constantly amazed when reading stories
about how easily Adolph Hitler rose to power in Germany by encouraging and exploiting
resentment of his countrymen over being forced, among other concessions outlined
in the Treaty of Versailles, to disarm militarily and make reparations for atrocities
committed in World War I. Part of the Nazi (National Socialist) party success
was extensive use of propaganda via print, radio, and the relatively new technology
of television. Government exercised complete control over the mainstream media (i.e.,
not "underground") by dictating content that promoted the proclaimed virtues of
Nazism and the Aryan race and the vices of just about every other form of government
and race. At the height of Hitler's reign of terror during the Third Reich era,
radio and television sets were only permitted to use crystals
tuned to state-sponsored...
 Manmade electrical noise (QRM) and natural
electrical noise (QRN) has been the nemesis of communications
- both wired and wireless - since the first signals were sent. While it is true
that over the last century the amount of "background" noise has increased significantly,
the ability of modern circuits to deal with (reject) it and/or accommodate (error
correction) it has pretty much kept up with the advancement. You might be tempted
to think that "back in the good old days" such problems did not exist, but operators
were plagued by poorly designed and inadequately filtered transmitters as well as
really deficient electrical service installation that spewed noise from transformers,
inadequately grounded transmission lines, lousy connections...
 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.
 The debate about upgrading electronics service
shop equipment
from vacuum tube to solid-state instruments was raging in the late 1960s, when
this Mac's Service Shop story appeared in Electronics World magazine. Barney
is querying Mac regarding FET-based VOM performance specifications he is considering
to replace a VTVM. He covets the Hewlett-Packard 217A square-wave generator, delivering
clean 1 Hz-10 MHz waves with 5-ns rise time and scope triggering, justifying its
$300-$400 cost for precise scope testing. An electronic counter for 5 Hz-10 MHz
frequencies, with four- or six-digit readouts and line- or crystal-gated accuracy..
 A lot of people like to demean engineers
and scientists for their propensity to want to
conduct experiments and obtain measured, empirical data rather
than "winging it" and being satisfied with "intuitive" knowledge or the contemporarily
popular term "gut." If mankind had not adopted scientific methods and ventured beyond
the "cradle of civilization" on the African continent, we would all still be living
in grass huts, hurling rocks at prey, making clicking sounds for communication,
and foraging for berries. Quantifying and categorizing all things in nature helps
inventors create new and improved implements that help make life better. Early on
it was mostly individuals like Archimedes, Euler, Newton, and Edison who built the
pool of knowledge that fed and evolved into corporations, governments, and universities
doing the vast majority of the work. Bell Laboratories...
 "A new metasurface lets scientists flip
between ultra-stable light vortices, paving the way for tougher, smarter wireless
communication. Scientists have developed a new optical device capable of producing
two different types of vortex-shaped light patterns: electric and magnetic. These
unusual light structures, called
skyrmions, are known for their exceptional stability and resistance to interference.
Because they hold their shape so reliably, they are strong candidates for carrying
information in future wireless communication systems. 'Our device not only generates
more than one vortex pattern in free-space-propagating..."
 You can buy a pretty good metal detector
today for a hundred dollars that will find coins buried many inches deep and larger
metallic items even deeper, and you even get discriminator functions to filter out
unwanted objects like tin cans. They weigh just a couple pounds and can be used
with one arm. Compare that to early
metal detectors that had huge induction coils on a frame so heavy
that shoulder straps were needed just to lug them around. Some models came on wheels
for pushing or pulling like a cart. You could plan to spend a few hundred dollars
(a thousand or more in today's dollars) for one. Even then, they were not as sophisticated
as the $50 models sold in Walmart now. In classic fashion, teen electronics hobbyists
Carl and Jerry use their technical prowess to design and build their own metal detector
and then unintentionally using it to convince...
 This might be one of the earliest printed
instances of Harold A. Wheeler's simplified formulas for the
three basic inductor forms. Wheeler is credited with having devised the first
automatic volume control (AVC) using diode envelope detection. We all use them on
a regular basis, but for most the origin was never known or has long since been
forgotten (I fall into the latter category). I did some research on Wheeler's
inductance formulas a few months ago while working on what is now titled "RF Cafe
Espresso Engineering Workbook™," so it was sort of déjà vu when this blurb appeared
in a 1932 edition of Radio-Craft magazine...
 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.
 Don't let the title fool you. This "Ultrafax" system developed by RCA in the late 1940s was essentially
the first attempt at video on demand, or streaming video. Rather than piping the
signal over cable or local broadcast frequency towers, a microwave link was used.
While initial system equipment space and financial requirements meant only corporations,
universities, and governments could procure an Ultrafax, engineers who developed
the system envisioned an eventual culmination of equivalent systems in every home.
Even at the end of the last century it was still not possible for program providers
to personalize broadcasts to individuals. It wasn't until broadband Internet came
on the scene in the 2000s that such services were possible. Now, a decade later,
people watch any video they want on cellphones while riding in a car...
 Maxwell's inception of the theory of electromagnetic
radiation is compared here to if Christopher Columbus had conceptualized the existence
of America and mapped its features based solely on observations of how the known
oceans and land masses interacted. I have always been amazed at the ability of people
who formulate entirely new theories of science, finance, medicine, etc., and manage
to detail and support their ideas with hard data and mathematics. Einstein did so
with relativity, Dalton did so with atomic structure, Darwin did so with evolution,
Pasteur did so with germ theory; the list is long. There are lots of geniuses out
there, but a relative few change the world...
 "A research team affiliated with UNIST has
introduced a novel, high-performance, and thermally stable polymer-based non-volatile
analog switch. This next-generation device is as
thin and flexible as vinyl, yet capable of withstanding high temperatures. Professor
Myungsoo Kim and his team from the Department of Electrical Engineering at UNIST,
in collaboration with Professor Minju Kim from Dankook University, have developed
this robust, flexible radio-frequency (RF) switch. Such technology could enable
reliable 5G and 6G wireless communication in demanding environments -- such as wearable
devices and the Internet of Things (IoT)..."
 Werbel Microwave began as a consulting firm,
specializing in RF components design, with the ability to rapidly spin low volume
prototypes. Our
WM4PD-0.5-18-S is a wideband 4-way in-line power splitter covering 500 MHz
to 18 GHz with excellent return loss, low insertion loss, and high isolation
performance. The device covers several military radios letter octave bands in one
product, delivering much value to the program. Aluminum enclosure measures 6.25
x 2.98 x 0.50", includes four through-mounting holes, and has durable, stainless
steel SMA female connectors. One device covers the upper UHF band, as well as L,
S, C, X and Ku bands...
 This week's
Wireless Engineering crossword puzzle contains the usual collection
of only 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!
 Providing full solution service is our motto,
not just selling goods. RF &
Connector Technology has persistently pursued a management policy stressing
quality assurance system and technological advancement. From your very first contact,
you will be supported by competent RF specialists; all of them have several years
of field experience in this industry allowing them to suggest a fundamental solution
and troubleshooting approach. Coaxial RF connectors, cable assemblies, antennas,
terminations, attenuators, couplers, dividers, and more. Practically, we put priority
on process inspection at each step of workflow as well as during final inspection
in order to actualize "Zero Defects."
 "Essayons," that's the motto of the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers. It means "Let us try," in French. In 1968, when this
G.I. Engineers editorial appeared in Electronics World magazine, it
noted that about 38,000 engineers, or roughly roughly 6% of the nation's total,
served in the U.S. Armed Forces, far more technically skilled than in World War
II or Korea. Despite surpluses in bachelor's-degree holders, advanced-degree shortages
persisted, with over 15 thousand master's and PhD positions unfilled - by fewer
than 8,500 qualified personnel, forcing underqualified assignments. Utilization
varied: Air Force effectively deployed 14,000 engineers in R&D and civil roles;
Navy specialist programs covered ship, ordnance, aeronautical, and Civil Engineer
Corps (Seabees)...
 Here is a handy-dandy baker's dozen worth
of "kinks," otherwise known as
tricks, shortcuts, or clever ideas, that could prove useful while
working in the lab at work or in your shop at home. One suggestion is to place a
sheet of tracing paper over your schematic while wiring a circuit and draw each
connection as it is completed, rather than mark up the original drawing. That was
definitely good for a time when making a spare copy of a magazine page or assembly
instruction from a kit was not as simple a matter as it is today...
 "Apple has published a patent application
describing a method to detect user gestures on wireless earbuds by measuring changes
in RF antenna impedance, potentially reducing the need for dedicated touch-sensing
hardware. The filing, titled 'Gesture
Detection Based on Antenna Impedance Measurements,' published on January 8,
2026 as US 20260010234, describes using antennas already present for wireless communication
as dual-purpose components that can also detect user input..."
|
 • 2026 is
Year of 6G Slop
• FCC to
Exempt Amateurs from Foreign Adversary Reporting
• Continuing
Your Professional Education in 2026
• India Reaches
400M 5G Subscribers
in 3 Years
• EIB Backs
Europe's 1st Gallium Production Investment
• 2026 a
Pivotal Year for 6G Standardization
 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.
 This is a very interesting
article about the
FCC's "Secrecy of Communications" rules. Manmade radio interference (QRM in
Ham lingo), has been a problem since the early days of wireless communications.
You might convincingly argue that it was worse at a time when many transmitters
were of the arc type that basically spewed out a mess of RF energy within a specified
bandwidth (very wide compared to today) to signal the presence of a "dit" (a digital
"1"), with the absence of a signal being a "dah" (digital "0"). Filter technology
for both the transmit and receive sides was also poor, allowing unintentional RF
noise to be sent over the air and to find its way into the detector circuits. The
Federal Communications Commission (FCC), first formed in 1934, nearly four decades
after Guglielmo Marconi first demonstrated his wireless set in 1896. Sometime around
1952, the FCC allocated a half dozen frequencies in the 27 MHz for radio control
(R/C) model use, mixed within the existing citizens band (CB) radio channels. As
you might imagine, interference problems were rampant, especially near metro areas
and highways with heavy truck traffic. This editorial in a 1969 issue of American
Aircraft Modeler magazine reports on just how bad things had gotten, especially
that caused by operators using faulty and/or illegally modified transmitters, and
even by malicious intentional attempts to "shoot down" model airplanes by keying
transmitters in the vicinity of flight activity. In 1965, the FCC allocated...
 In August of 1940, issue No. 24 of the
Radio Trade Digest had a couple major historical announcements. The first
is "F.C.C. Authorizes Commercial F.M.," which assigned 40 UHF (42 - 50 MHz band)
commercial broadcast channels 5 non-commercial channels. Frequencies were changed
to 88 - 108 MHz in 1946. The second major announcement was that Philco (founded
in 1892 as Helios Electric Company, then changed to the Philadelphia
Storage Battery Company in 1906) had become a publically
traded company. It required private stock holders to convert and re-value their
holdings to make some of them available for public sale, which or course they voted
for. I don't know how IPOs worked back then, but my guess is they were not as dynamic...
 Contributors to the Wikipedia article on
the
Yagi-Uda antenna credit Japanese professor Shintaro Uda primarily for the antenna's
development, with Hidetsugu Yagi having played a 'lesser role." Other sources assign
the primary role to Yagi. Regardless, history - and this article's author, rightly
or wrongly, has decreed that this highly popular design be referred to commonly
as the Yagi antenna and not the Uda antenna. I don't recall seeing advertisements
for 'Uda' television or amateur radio antennas. Harold Harris, of Channel Master
Corporation, does a nice job explaining the fundamentals of the Yagi antenna...
 If there is or ever has been a solid state
device that required as much painstaking, precise, manual assembly required as some
of the magnificent vacuum tubes developed over the years, I don't know of it. This
500 kilowatt "super-power beam triode" featured in a 1950 issue of Radio &
Television News magazine is a good example. Think of the electrical, mechanical,
chemical, and manufacturing engineering that went into designing, building, and
testing such devices. Half a megawatt from a single tube is quite an accomplishment.
It required a 900 watt control grid signal for modulation. The article refers
to an electron-optical system, and I'm not sure what it meant unless it is the array
of 48 sharply focused electron beams...
 Any mention of a "Zeppelin" conjures up
thoughts of disaster in the form of the famous Hindenburg incident at Lakehurst,
New Jersey, back in 1937. Fortunately, not all things "Zepp" are bad news. The
end-fed Zepp (short for Zeppelin) antenna is as popular today as it was when
the Germans developed it for use in the Zeppelin airships. One of the major advantages
to an end-fed Zepp is that it is, as the name suggests, fed from the end rather
than in the center like a dipole. The configuration makes installation simpler than
a dipole. Being so simple in construction, the Zepp handily functions as a multi-band
harmonic antenna so it is useful on, for instance, the 160, 80, 40, 20, and 10 meter
Ham bands. Many companies (e.g., MFJ Enterprises) sell Zepp antennas as well as
the modified Zepp known as a J-pole antenna. This article will help you make your
own Zepp antenna system, including a matching network...
 Here is a brief synopsis of radar (radio
detection and ranging). Today, most people who would be reading a magazine like
Radio-Craft would have at least a layman's level of knowledge of what radar
is and how it works. However, in late 1945 when the transition from a wartime society
to a "normal" existence was solidly underway, many new terms and types of inventions
previously withheld for defense security reasons were being released into the public
domain. I have mentioned previously that some people were vehemently against making
a lot of the stuff known, but government agencies wanted to get the information
out in order to promote innovation for improvement, to provide new technology for
manufacturers, and to reward citizens for the lifestyle and personal safety sacrifices
made in order to help secure victory...
 Three of the most popular topics for comics
back in the day when these appeared in Radio-Electronics magazine were
stereo system fanatics, the battle between television owners and servicemen, and
the notion that electronics product sales people were a bunch of charlatans. The
comic on page 98 is pretty funny, although it might be considered somewhat unacceptable
by today's easily offended population. Seeing the telephone number with a two-letter
prefix (e.g., Rick and Lucy Ricardo's MUrray Hill5-9975 meant their number was M[6]U[8]5-9975)
reminded me of the webpage I found explaining the system. It mentions that many
users opposed the elimination of the prefixes and going to all numbers, including
two organized groups - the Anti-Digit Dialing League and the
Committee of Ten Million to Oppose All-Number Calling. Coalitions of concerned
citizens for every conceivable issue has been around for a long time...
 Except under special circumstances, the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) does not conduct much frequency monitoring activity.
I know first-hand that even when a report of
radio frequency interference (RFI) is made to them, you will be told to figure
out the source on your own and then get back to them*. There have been a lot of
news items lately where the FCC has levied heavy fines on Ham operators found to
be in violation of the regulations, and usually not because of independent complaints.
This article from a 1956 edition of Popular Electronics magazine relates some of
the cases experienced by guys in the FCC Field Engineering and Monitoring Bureau's
according to "Negotiated Rulemaking Committee" (NRMC - now defunct) records...
 Here is a good, brief introduction to
harmonic and intermodulation distortion measurement methods that were
commonly used in the 1960s. Total harmonic distortion (THD) was used often,
especially for audio equipment, which of course most frequency conversion
circuits ultimately were in the era since digital data transmission over the air
was not too common. Author Charles Moore worked for Hewlett-Packard (HP) and
references HP Application Note 15, "Distortion and Intermodulation" which,
thankfully, is made available by Hewlett-Packard / Agilent / Keysight on their
website. In fact, a complete list of all the vintage app notes are available on
this page by downloading the Excel file. I highly recommend that you download
and save all you think...
 If you are a Ham radio operator - especially
a DX (long distance) operator, you have been required to study and learn about how
the various layers of the Earth's ionosphere can, under predictable conditions,
be an excellent reflector of certain radio wavelengths, thereby facilitating
over-the-horizon communications. Reading this article is like a flashback from
the license preparation manuals - particularly for the General license exam. There
is a lot of information here. When this article was published in a 1958 issue of
Radio & TV News magazine, the world was nearing the end of the International
Geophysical Year (IGY), which had as its goal learning as much as possible about
the properties of the upper atmosphere. The first earth-orbiting satellites were
being launched and manned space flight was only months away, so there was much interest
in learning...
 Time to put on the thinking cap again for
three more "What's
Your EQ?" circuit challenges, compliments of Radio-Electronics magazine
in May 1962. The first is a classic "black box" type problem which, from reading
its description, involves some sort of resonant circuit. that's all I'll say on
that. The next, called "An Easy One?" should, by the way it is drawn, be a clue
that it might be easier to solve if you re-draw it to make a familiar-looking circuit.
Hint: Summons the spirit of Sir Charles Wheatstone. Just the name of the last one,
"Iterative Network," is enough to induce a cold sweat. As with most of these "What's
Your EQ?" problems, successful completion of a first year college circuits course
is plenty to get through them. A few are better attempted by people with hands-on
experience troubleshooting circuits, but don't let that scare you off...
 It was a lot of work, but I finally finished
a version of the "RF &
Electronics Schematic & Block Diagram Symbols"" that works well with Microsoft
Office™ programs Word™, Excel™, and Power Point™. This is an equivalent of the extensive
set of amplifier, mixer, filter, switch, connector, waveguide, digital, analog,
antenna, and other commonly used symbols for system block diagrams and schematics
created for Visio™. Each of the 1,000+ symbols was exported individually from Visio
in the EMF file format, then imported into Word on a Drawing Canvas. The EMF format
allows an image to be scaled up or down without becoming pixelated, so all the shapes
can be resized in a document and still look good. The imported symbols can also
be UnGrouped into their original constituent parts for editing...
 The September 1932 issue of Radio Craft
contained an article titled, "Radio a la Cortlandt Street!," the original "Radio
Row" located at the corner of Cortlandt and Washington Streets in Manhattan. It was
a mecca of new and used electronics components and assemblies. After World War II
there was a huge supply of surplus parts and equipment made available to the public as
a means to clear out inventory and also as a "thank you" to the citizens who voluntarily
donated critically needed panel meters, tuning capacitors, connectors, and other items
to the War Department. That really helped the market boom. Post-war electronics
magazines were chock full of ads by dealers selling surplus electronic and
mechanical supplies...
 Here in one short editorial article, Hugo
Gernsback outlines the
application of shortwaves in "the next war" to maintain wireless surveillance
of the airspace over towns and cities via what is essentially radar, to detonate
explosive devices by means of a powerful "special combination impulse," and long-distance
wireless communications via radios "so small that one man can easily carry it."
This might seem rather moot in today's world, but in 1935 it required a certain
amount of knowledge of wireless communications and a vision regarding its potential.
In my readings of a great many early- to mid-20th-century technical articles on
electronics, aeronautics, physics, etc., it is interesting to notice how authors
of the pre-WWII era referred to what we now call "World War I" as simply...
 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...
 NASA is currently collecting a phenomenal
amount of data on the planet Mars. No small part of the effort is to determine whether
sending humans to inhabit Mars would be feasible, or even at all possible. In order
for it to be even possible for a long-term stay, it would be necessary for consumable
resources to be accessible by Earth Martians. Discovering water ice would be the
pièce de résistance since water is heavy and therefore very expensive to transport
across vast reaches of space. Another key bit of data needed is frequency and size
of meteor strikes on the surface since that figures directly into survivability.
Long before we had the capability or even need to do that for Mars, NASA was doing
the same sort of investigation on our moon (as opposed to one of Mars' two moons,
Phobos and Deimos). The resolution of telescopes, all ground-based in the day, was
good enough to perform site selection surveys in the x-y plane, but altitude data
could only be inferred via estimations based on shadow lengths along the terminator
(night/day line of demarcation) and sideways glances of peaks and valleys. That
was not good enough for planning a human expedition to the surface, so engineers
and scientists came up with a
radar mapping technique to obtain z-axis data. That effort is reported here
in this May 1961 edition of Popular Electronics...
 This has always been one of my favorite
Calvin & Hobbes comic strip episodes. Calvin's father, a patent
attorney, is famous for providing zany explanations to Calvin's inquiries about
physics, astronomy, and other science subjects which he knows nothing about. In
this comic, Calvin is riding in the car over a bridge with "Weight Limit 10
Tons" on it. He asks his father how the limits are determined. His father, whose
name has never been divulged (neither first name nor last name), replies with a
typically hilarious version of what goes into the weight limit calculation. Read
on for explanations on where babies come from, why old photographs are in black
and white even though much older paintings are in color, the sunset, how a light
bulb works, and even Relativity, amongst other things. Bill Watterson was truly
a genius...
 September 27th's custom
Engineering themed crossword puzzle contains only only words from my custom-created
lexicon related to engineering, science, mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy,
etc. (1,000s of them). 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, find someone or something in the otherwise excluded list directly
related to this puzzle's technology theme, such as Hedy Lamarr or the Bikini Atoll,
respectively. The technically inclined cruciverbalists amongst us will appreciate
the effort... |
