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RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while typing up your telephone line, and a nice lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...

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RCA Test Equipment Advertisement
November 1963 Popular Electronics

November 1963 Popular Electronics

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Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Popular Electronics, published October 1954 - April 1985. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.

I have to admit to not remembering (or ever knowing) that Radio Corporation of America (RCA) manufactured electrical test equipment, so seeing this full-page advertisement in a 1963 edition of Popular Electronics was a surprise. RCA made a few types of analog multimeter kits, some project and experimenter kits, and even an oscilloscope kit. A little more thumbing through other Popular Electronics editions revealed the RCA Institutes, which was a mail order electronics training program similar to the ITT Institute and

National Radio Institute (NRI, from whom I took a course many moons ago). Knowing that if you wait long enough, just about everything shows up on eBay, I did a quick check and found a few vintage RCA Institutes items, including an RCA Institutes Ham Radio Signal Generator Kit.

On a whim, I looked on eBay for the 10 MHz oscilloscope kit that came with my NRI course, and there one was, but it had already been built (on left). I remember that the time base was calibrated by clipping a ceramic capacitor to the probe and sticking it in the wall receptacle and adjusting for 16.67 ms. Amplitude calibration was done by measuring a battery voltage with a voltmeter and adjusting accordingly. Close was good enough at the time.

See all articles from Popular Electronics.

RCA Test Equipment Advertisement, November 1963 Popular Electronics - RF Cafe

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RCA Test Equipment AdvertisementNovember 1963 Popular Electronics

RCA Test Equipment Advertisement
November 1963 Popular Electronics