May 1967 Electronics World
Table
of Contents
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles
from
Electronics World, published May 1959
- December 1971. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
|
Talk about ESD tolerant! Get a load of that electron beam welding
computer memory. Of course, that isn't silicon - it's magnetic
core memory, the kind with tiny toroids with 4 tiny wires running
through them for the read and write operations. If you want
a computer memory that will survive a nuclear EMP, this is your
answer. Hook it up to your electron tube computer and you'll
be playing Pong while all the other survivors are back to tic-tac-toe
with pencil and paper!
Recent Developments in Electronics

Electron Beam Welds Computer Memory. A sharply focused beam
of electrons is being used to perform tiny precision welds on
critical electrical connections for computer memory arrays.
The beam welder is used to connect the terminals of ferrite
core planes with those immediately above and beneath them in
the array. Using the electron-beam technique, these precise
welds can be done in a continuous operation rather than singly
as with conventional welding. The welds produced are uniform
and look like ball-shaped nuggets. This makes it easy to spot
a poor weld during quality-control inspections. During manufacture,
the tips of a column of electrical terminals are automatically
and sequentially passed through the electron beam until the
entire side of the array has been welded. All four sides of
the array are welded in this way. The technique is now being
used on the production lines at IBM's Kingston plant.

One-Man TV Studio. A new one-man television studio expressly
designed for classroom and industrial training was demonstrated
recently. The console-size closed-circuit TV unit brings multi-classroom
instruction using audio-visual techniques within the reach of
every size school and plant. With this new equipment, a single
instructor can combine live instruction with video-taped lessons,
films, slides, photographs, charts, and other graphic material.
The resulting program can be transmitted live or recorded on
video tape for later use. The teaching unit combines two TV
cameras and standard audio-visual aids with simplified up-front
controls. The basic studio, called WAVE (Westinghouse Audio-Visual
Electronics), will sell for about $12,000. A companion recorder
for video and five different audio tracks is also available
separately. The studio is easily adapted to microwave transmission
of programs to remote areas or to CCTV.

Laboratory on Wheels. A 40-foot trailer, chock full of electronic
recording equipment, is helping nuclear physicists at the Argonne
National Laboratories look deeper into the atom. The traveling
lab serves as a mobile recording center for advanced atomic
experiments conducted jointly by Argonne and the University
of Chicago's Enrico Fermi Institute for Nuclear Studies. The
study is devoted to a detailed analysis of the beta decay of
the lambda particle and utilizes Argonne's 12 1/2 billion electron
volt proton accelerator, the second largest unit of its kind
in the country. The trailer, built by Brown Trailer Div., is
equipped with a 5-ton air conditioner and acoustical-tile ceiling
to provide a cool, clean quiet environment for the lab.
"Canned" Weather Satellite. The engineers shown here are
giving a new Tiros Operational System (TOS) weather satellite
its final check before "canning" it for shipment to the Western
Test Range in California. The satellite is to provide daily
global coverage of the earth's weather. Now in orbit, it is
known as ESSA 4 and is taking over from ESSA 2, which has been
in orbit over a year. Additional Tiros weather satellites are
on the assembly line at the RCA Space Center in Princeton, N.J.
for replacement.

Eight Military Communications Satellites in a Pod. (Below) A
protective shroud is being lowered over this group of communications
satellites at Cape Kennedy prior to launch last January. The
eight were hurled into space by a single rocket to complete
the nation's first global military communications satellite
network. The new Philco-Ford satellites joined seven others
that were orbited last June to form a radio network that will
permit the Pentagon to contact our military forces located in
Vietnam and elsewhere.

Optical Scanner Reads Weather Data. An improved model of
a film optical sensing device for input to computers has been
completed by the National Bureau of Standards for use with computers
of the National Weather Records Center in Asheville, N. C. The
device reads data on past weather conditions from microfilms
of punched cards and selects data to be tape recorded. This
permits ready comparison of past and present weather data and
should result in improvements in the weather predictions.

Million-Volt Pulse Generator. (Below) The generator shown
here, when triggered, can deliver a million-volt pulse with
a risetime below 50 ns and an energy in excess of 100 joules.
The instrument was designed as a research tool for the experimental
scientist engaged in high-energy work. It also has uses in electronics,
such as for antenna and surge-protector testing. Special safety
and interlock features are incorporated to minimize danger to
personnel. The generator, built by Instrument Research Co.,
sells for $12,000.
Posted 3/12/2012