Comments

JoeMess wrote on 4/5/2011, 12:09 PM
I just had to share this one on Facebook. Am I alone in thinking it is like a fine piece of art? It reminds me of those $1300 USB keyboards from Steampunk that were built out of early typewrites. I couldn't rationalize the expense, but what a combination of beautiful form and function!
gpsmikey wrote on 4/5/2011, 1:24 PM
The spooky part is that is not that much before my time !! When I first started learning electronics, everything was vacuum tube and had 400+ volts somewhere in it (you learned to poke around very carefully !! ). Used to go down to the local thrift store and pick up old Television chassis that they were scrapping out for 50 cents for my parts supplies. The funniest one though had to be one of the Star Trek episodes where Spock goes under the main console to "fix" the life support system or something. There were a bunch of circuit boards ... the exact same ones I was picking up at Radio Shack surplus at 5 for a dollar :-)

mikey
Chienworks wrote on 4/5/2011, 1:33 PM
Hey! Where do you think Star Fleet goes shopping for their parts? Huh?
gpsmikey wrote on 4/5/2011, 2:03 PM
Good point !!

mikey
ushere wrote on 4/5/2011, 4:18 PM
i'd be interested as long as it showed the original programs as well ;-)
SuperG wrote on 4/6/2011, 6:47 AM
I miss the old surplus radio parts stores.
RalphM wrote on 4/6/2011, 8:19 AM
Dad's old Motorola set (a 10 inch table model), built in 1948 still works (although it always ate the tube that controlled vertical stabilization every three months). It resides in the attic.

Perhaps it could be traded for a case of beer.....
gpsmikey wrote on 4/6/2011, 9:39 AM
Ah yes, the old TV's - 5 minutes to warm up, kept the whole end of the house warm and everybody in the family knew how to fiddle with the fine tuning, horizontal and vertical hold. Remember when every store in town had a "Tube tester" and you would wander up with a bag of tubes to try and find out which needed replacing?

And the surplus radio outfits were more fun to snoop around in and look at all the gadgets. I still have my favorite downstairs - ART-13 surplus transmitter (I think that is the model). It had something like 10 channels you could preset. Then you locked down the tuning knobs again. When you switched the front panel switch to the desired channel, a motor drive would spin all the knobs (5 or 6 of them?) until they were in the position you had set them to previously. Rube Goldberg would have been very proud :-) Had an 813 for the final output tube with a pair of 811 tubes for modulation. State of the art for it's day !!
https://www.fairradio.com/catalog.php
https://www.fairradio.com/_uploaded/2253.jpg

mikey
jeremyk wrote on 4/6/2011, 12:54 PM
There's a BBC documentary from 1986 commemorating 50 years of British TV, posted on YouTube by Stefan Sargent, who writes a column in DV Magazine.

Part 2 of the doc describes the early days of British TV. It's quite good.



DGates wrote on 4/6/2011, 4:17 PM
"I'd be interested as long as it showed the original programs as well ;-)"

Indeed. That would be awesome.