Beauty of old electrical and measuring things, etc.

[Chris Riccard]

Some things I want saved for the for the future are geranium diodes and mylar variable capacitors, a small verity of tubes, old tube televisions in prestine condition, old solid state black and white televisions with air gap tuning variable capasitors in clean working condition, a few 1960s table top radios with the old style carbon comp resistors and ferite antennas, XT computers with 5-1/4 fdds, the works on that one, Mac se30's that still work with software, and dip IC's. Oh and quality VOMs.

I hope somebody keeps a warehouse full of this stuff.

Edit: don't forget the old tape decks and VCRs.

 

[Mark44]

geranium diodes

Good luck finding geranium diodes. The geraniums tend to wilt in just a few weeks.

You'll have better luck finding germanium diodes.

 

[jedishrfu]

The geranium joke reminded of the time a woman came into the store looking for self abasive tape, you know the kind that’s sticky on both sides.

 

[jim hardy]

And don't forget to empty the grid leak drip pans...

 

[dlgoff]

I'm doing a pump-down with my "new" old Welch 1402 vacuum pump. It's doing a beautiful job.

 

[jim hardy]

You have most amazing toys !

old jim

 

[dlgoff]

You have most amazing toys !

old jim

Thanks. And they're beautiful, IMO.

 

[Baluncore]

I'm doing a pump-down with my "new" old Welch 1402 vacuum pump. It's doing a beautiful job.

If you pull a vacuum with an old pump, will it produce a new vacuum or an old vacuum.

 

[jedishrfu]

Will there be any dark matter inside the old vacuum? :-)

 

[dlgoff]

It looks good up in the air.

View attachment 225968

I thought it would look neat to add some navigation lights to the Narco navigation antenna installation.

Aircraft navigation lights are placed in a way similar to that of marine vessels, with a red navigation light located on the left wingtip leading edge and a green light on the right wingtip leading edge.

left navigation light:

right navigation light:

 

[jim hardy]

Is that a VOR or RDF ? Does it find your local radio stations ?

 

[dlgoff]

Is that a VOR or RDF ? Does it find your local radio stations ?

VOR 108.1 to 117.95 MHz and communications 118 to 135 MHz. The VOR station that it's pointed toward is the Butler, MO VORTAC station @115.90 MHz.

 

[jim hardy]

Ahh found ya. Butler looks like a good check.. Topeka's no challenge !

 

[dlgoff]

Ahh found ya. Butler looks like a good check..

Back when I was testing the Narco Super Homer, I found the latitude and longitude of the antenna using Google Earth for Windows and the latitude and longitude of the Butler VOR station using AirNav.com. Then by plugging in these co-ordinates into this distance and bearing calculation site, the Butler VOR station is 116.6 km at a initial bearing of 139°58'30" from the antenna.

 

[dlgoff]

Here's some of my RF stuff:

I came across this Kris 23+ CB Transceiver a year or so ago. It's in pristine condition and was in it's original box. I haven't found the exact time these were manufactured, but they were made in Japan. Probably in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Definitely beautiful; condition and all.

Now this Hammarlund CB-23 is what I used back in the 1960s. They were advertised in the June 1963 edition of Popular Electronics. Very hard to find now days.

Here's a transmitter for the 20, 40, and 80 meter Ham bands. It will require lots of work should I ever get to it.

 

[jim hardy]

Here's a transmitter for the 20, 40, and 80 meter Ham bands. It will require lots of work should I ever get to it.

Amazing condition on your memorabilia, Don !

I have a Heath DX100 someplace i think.

What a time we live in.. My grandmother lived from times of horse and buggy to moon landings... We've lived from vacuum tubes to cellphones and internet.. It's as profound as the printing press...

old jim

 

[dlgoff]

What a time we live in.. My grandmother lived from times of horse and buggy to moon landings... We've lived from vacuum tubes to cellphones and internet.. It's as profound as the printing press...

It's really amazing to think how short of time this has occurred. I wonder what the world will be like after a similar amount of time.

 

[dlgoff]

I have a Heath DX100 someplace i think.

You should find http://www.heathkit-museum.com/ham/hvmdx-100.shtml and bring it back to life. Might motivate me to bring mine back to life.

 

[davenn]

Here's some of my RF stuff:

Very cool, Don

As Jim said, an amazing collection :)Dave.

 

[dlgoff]

Very cool, Don

As Jim said, an amazing collection :)Dave.

Thank You Sir.

 

[Windadct]

This came up in my LinkedIn feed:

Amsted Rail in St. Louis is still powered by GE switchgear installed in 1898!

 

[dlgoff]

Amsted Rail in St. Louis is still powered by GE switchgear installed in 1898!

Not sure I'd like to open or close one of those knife switches. Just sayin'

 

[dlgoff]

I probably shouldn't post this photo here since it's not beautiful in it's current state. It had a hung-up vain blade, I think. It's going to be another late night.

It should look like this.

 

[dlgoff]

I probably shouldn't post this photo here since it's not beautiful in it's current state. It had a hung-up vain blade, I think. It's going to be another late night.

View attachment 228799

It should look like this.

Beauty of hardware doesn't just come from it's appearance but also it's functionality.

Functioning again.

 

[dlgoff]

A neighbor of mine brought me a bucket with ~75 old vacuum tubes. So I put them into my tube caddy:

But what I found interesting in the bucket was this 4-pin vibrator with the original sales receipt. Back in the day it cost $1.79:

Vibrators were used a lot in old car radios to make "a.c." by chopping the d.c. supply voltage:

image compliments of https://radioremembered.org/

 

[berkeman]

Not sure I'd like to open or close one of those knife switches. Just sayin'

My laser physics professor in undergrad used to say in his lectures, "And then I had the graduate student throw the switch", and he always smiled at that. I was never motivated to become one of his TAs or graduate students...

 

[dlgoff]

My laser physics professor in undergrad used to say in his lectures, "And then I had the graduate student throw the switch", and he always smiled at that. I was never motivated to become one of his TAs or graduate students...

I don't blame you @berkeman. I had an electrician job at an old chemical plant and a work order came down where you had to switch off some really high voltage using a whisker poll. Since it was the worker's responsibility whether to take on the job or not (for safety sake), I told the foreman that 440 vac was my limit.

 

[jedishrfu]

We had a lab setup for the Zeeman effect that used a big knife switch which I imagined came from an old Frankenstein movie that was in series with an old sliding potentiometer. The trick was to throw the switch, amp up the electromagnet via the potentiometer and to then observe the Zeeman effect in some excited sample in the electromagnetic field. The electromagnet was cooled by running tap water through tubes embedded in the core that circulated water about and back to the sink.

The one warning we were given was to never pull the knife switch until the electromagnet was amped down first otherwise we would be fried by the massive spark caused by a collapsing field. I think this experiment traumatized us as we had seen too many monster movies...

 

[dlgoff]

I found this Western Electric telephone set at the Antique Mall at a really cheap price and just had to have it. It's not as old as the Kellogg phone (post #71) but still old. From what I've been able to find, it was manufactured between 1928 and 1937. Here are a couple "before restore" photographs.

Inside of the ringer box:

From the labels on the C-mount dialer, it came from a plumbing business located in Lawrence, Kansas; which maybe explains the ~10 foot long hand-set cable.

I'll post some photos when its "restored" and wall-mounted.

 

[jedishrfu]

Some old timey pictures of my sliderules of yore per an earlier request. The straight ones are decitrigs and the circular one is well circular with basic scales for multiplying and simple trig.

One cool feature of the circular one is a math and science pullout complete with a detailed periodic table written in super tiny writing. You can still get these on eBay or from Concise in Japan.

Physics majors preferred the small pocket size for stealth while engineers and high schoolers preferred the 12” variety as weapons of math instruction.