4 Jun
2000
4 Jun
'00
3:48 p.m.
That's not to say the odds are as good of them
working as WWII surplus
still working. A radio from that era was a far more durable piece of
equipment (aside from the chance of tube (valve) breakage from
improper handling and capacitors, or condensors as they called them
back then, going bad) than a CD-ROM drive with all it's
miniaturization and parts that probably won't handle years and years
of thermal fluctuations very well and thin plastic parts that may
become brittle and break, etc.
?????
While the military radios back then certainly were built tobe more
durable, they do not age well at all.Simply put, materials just were not
very good back then - ask any chemist or metalurgist (sp?). The plastics
are horrid, the rubbers are just as bad. Paper has a huge acid content,
and metals often are laced with impurities.
In contrast, modern plastics and rubbers are incredibly stable, the acid
content in paper has gone down, and metals are more pure. Many of these
changes can be traced back to the space industry, so these meterials
have quite a few years of "real world testing" under their belt, and are
coming out champs.
William Donzelli
aw288(a)osfn.org