History Vintage

Tech History and Antique Equipment

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This site’s purpose is to address the lack of technical information for some of the rarer vintage computers and related peripherals, with a strong focus on SWTPC.

Radio-Electronics and Popular Electronics – SWTPC

More than 600 pages of assembly instructions, schematics, program listings, catalogs, photos and much, much more! – Bill’s Knowledge Base, Michael Holley’s massive SWTPC doc collection.

Radio-Electronics and Popular Electronics

Popular Electronics was created in 1954 by Ziff-Davis Publishing for an audience of  electronics hobbyists and experimenters. It soon became the “World’s Largest-Selling Electronics Magazine”. The circulation was 240,000 by 1957 and exceeded 400,000 by 1963. Rival “Electronics World” was merged into “Popular Electronics” in 1972.

Radio Electronics was the “new” name for Radio Craft magazine.. Hugo Gernsback, sometimes called The Father of Science Fiction, started it as Radio-Craft in July 1929. The title was changed to Radio-Electronics in October 1948. In July of 1992 transitioned to “Electronics Now”.

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Radio-Electronics was an American electronics magazine that was published under various titles from 1929 to 2003.You can Read them all here .

Radio Electronics Magazine at The Internet Archive

Recently i found a collection of those mags at Archive.org …..

Radio Electronics Magazine at Archive.org

Hugo Gernsback, sometimes called The Father of Science Fiction, started it as Radio-Craft in July 1929. The title was changed to Radio-Electronics in October 1948 and again to Electronics Now in July 1992. In January 2000 it was merged with Gernsback’s Popular Electronics to become Poptronics.

Gernsback Publications ceased operations in December 2002 and the January 2003 issue was the last.

Over the years, Radio-Electronics featured audio, radio, television and computer technology. The most notable articles were the TV Typewriter (September 1973)[1] and the Mark-8 computer (July 1974). These two issues are considered milestones in the home computer revolution.

Radio Electronics Magazine at SWTPC

Radio-Electronics was aimed at electronics’ professionals such as radio and TV repairmen. And they were men, the tag line on the cover was “For Men with Ideas in Electronics”.

Radio-Electronics & Electronics Now

Radio Electronics was the “new” name for Radio Craft magazine.. Hugo Gernsback, sometimes called The Father of Science Fiction, started it as Radio-Craft in July 1929. The title was changed to Radio-Electronics in October 1948. In July of 1992 transitioned to “Electronics Now

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“I make things, mostly technological, but don’t hold me to that, consistency is not a human virtue. Electronics and software, cast iron and plastics, microcontrollers in vintage automobiles, faux historical machinery that could (not) have been; finely crafted, rigorously rugged, reliable, most often.”

Tom Jennings – World Power Systems

The Model 01a (aka M01a) is a 3″ x 5.5″ self-contained controller board designed for embedded applications. It’s based around Microchip Inc’s in-circuit-programmable 14-bit PICs, and contains I/O expansion, a power supply and various goodies that I found useful in five years of using my previous controller board design.

WPS Model 01a Control Engine

WPS Model 01a Control Engine

The M01 board contains enough support hardware to pull off a lot of functionality. Before I get to handling common interface problems here’s a function-by-function description of the hardware. There’s some subtlety to some of the design that’s worth paying attention to.

Index of www.wps.com, by subject

Technical reference data; obsolete, obscure, hard to find, and sometimes just plain old; mostly things made or written by others.

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Yes, there were electric lights powered by central stations before Edison’s! Carbon arc lamps saw extensive use throughout the USA and the world from the late 1870s on. – Charles Brush

Museum Of Electricity – Charles Brush

The General Electric Company was formed in 1892. It was the result of a meger between the Edison General electric Company and the Thomson-Houston Company, which themselves incorporated several other companies.

Museum Of Electricity - Charles Brush

Electricity, technology, and lots of arcs and sparks!

Museum Of Electricity contains Vintage Electrical and Historical images and description. They include the Edison Lamp, Tesla Coils, Lightning and Atmospheric Electricity and the …..

Amazing Jacob’s Ladder

So how do they work?  First two conductive metal rods are positioned in a rough “V” shape with a slight space between them at the base.  A sufficient voltage differential is provided from a high voltage transformer to breakdown the air in the gap between the rods.

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Nikola Tesla invented the Tesla Coil in the late 1800s. Here you will find some information and technologies related to that. HV is not safe and this is not a Hobby for Youngsters. Read to understand the dangers of High Voltage and Marvel at the phenomena.

Tesla Coils from Terry Blake

Multi-Mini Capacitors

The pulse-energy nature of the Tesla coil has long been a tough environment for the discharge capacitor. Coilers have built capacitors with glass bottles and salt-water, sheets of glass and aluminum foil, and more recently, polyethylene sheets, aluminum flashing, and mineral oil

Magnifier Tesla Coil

In a Classic Tesla coil, the magnetic coupling between L1 and L2 is around 20% (0.2).  Tesla realized this caused a lot of loss, and he abandoned the design in favor of a 3 coil system with a very high coupling (60%).

Tesla Coils from Terry Blake

D.C. Cox’s Cheesehead Teslathon, Ed Wingate’s RATCB Teslathon, The Geek Group’s Halloween Teslathon and many more.

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“At the age of 10 we moved to Copenhagen for about 2 years. I had some friends there who knew that I liked old radios so regularly someone brought me one. (See my picture at the main page) Among them was the Bang & Olufsen – Grand Prix 48 K (photo). I liked this radio so much that I wanted to make it work again. There was not much wrong so I got it working. Later when we were back in Eindhoven, I made so many …….”

Franks Electron tube Pages

Franks Electron tube Pages

Frank Philipse – Waalre, the Netherlands.

  • Tube Number Systems
  • American Substitutes for Foreign Types
  • Foreign Substitutes for American Types

The tube data resides on several mirror sites in several countries and they are exactly equal, except for the Poland site which additionally has been equipped with a tube search.

More about Frank’s Experiments

“Back in Eindhoven, there where the 60’s. Radio Luxembourg on my B&O etc. I got interest in guitars and amplifiers. I built several Amps. My first amp was something with the EF11 and the EL3. I also built a copy of the Philips EL6431 Amplifier. (That’s where the output transformer of my B&O radio went) In Eindhoven there was a repair shop called ‘De Radiodokter’. He had some old TV chassis in the display for 5 guilders each. When I had saved enough money, I bought some. Then when I was about 16 I made my first really working TV from these parts.”