28 Mar
2001
28 Mar
'01
2:22 a.m.
On Wed, 28 Mar 2001 06:35:40 -0600 Russ Blakeman
<rhblake(a)bigfoot.com> wrote:
I had a crystal radio in my early teens that we built
from a library book
and then I moved to a Hallicrafters multiband reciever w/ long dipole
antenna. I still have the radio but have to find the capacitor that blew and
doesn't allow audio into the preamp. Good thing I have the schematic, now I
just need time.
Well, I can remember the days of 405-line TV here in
England. We watched it on a valve set made by Pye (now
part of Philips). By the time of the Moon landings we had
dual-standard 405/625 and VHF/UHF sets. Oh, and BBC 2 was
a new channel on UHF, 625-line only!
I started in electronics with PNP germanium transistors,
although a lot of valve radio and tape recording gear was
still around. My idea of "high-tech" shortly after that
was a 741 op-amp.
I've just done a lecture where I showed people an
acoustically-coupled modem (300 baud). I had to take an
old phone along to show how it would fit, because no-one
would imagine that now, with all phones being different
sizes.
"...and you try to tell the young people that, and they
won't believe you!"
--
John Honniball
Email: John.Honniball(a)uwe.ac.uk
University of the West of England