I wrote: Of course, this view overlooks the fact that 7-track tape drives were large, expensive and typically not owned by individuals, whereas there are millions of CD-ROM drives owned by individuals now. This suggests that even if CD-ROM were to be obsoleted tomorrow, that it probably still won't be that hard to turn up a working or repairable drive 30 years from now. Perhaps in 30 years the CD-ROM problem will be more akin to that of finding working 8-track players or 78 RPM turntables today. There are still some around, but they aren't commonplace.

At 11:27 PM 6/2/00 +0000, Eric Smith wrote: It would be interesting to compare the number of 78 RPM records ever made to the number of data CD made, for example. As for finding CD-ROM readers, I'm sure the surplus places will have pristine in-shrink-wrap ones on the shelf, in the same way you can still buy surplus from WW II. - John

????? 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

Question mark, followed by exclamation mark. Look up "season cracking". And find me a Hallicrafters S-meter in one piece. If its brass that has any impurities in it, internal (and external) stresses will crack it. Gears are fairly immune if they have been cut from free machining brass, but stamped gears are time bombs. If the brass was cold worked, it pretty much has a death sentence, with the day of execution determined by the quality of the metal. The point is that today's brass (and other metals) is far better than yesterday's, and will outlast it greatly. Season cracking is a restoration nightmare, as there really is nothing that can stop or repair it. Anyway, comparing poor quality brass to excellent stability plastic gearing is an apples to oranges comparison. That's not the issue. If anything, I am in 100 percent agreement. Of course a 1972 VCR will be built well! Back then, they cost lots of money, and Philips would lose favor in the market if they did build them cheaply. Well, this is also not the issue, and I pretty much agree here as we... The 50 year old CD-ROM will likely need far less in the repair department, because most (all?) of the parts will be just as good as the day they were born. Remember, we are talking about dealing with unused (or little used) equipment, not readers that have spent a few years in the computers of teenagers. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

Modern plastics _do_not_ suffer from mechanical and dimensional stability. They will not just "go bad" due to age, like older plastics and brasses. You've been lucky. Also, keep in mind that many of these cracks can not be seen, and do lead to teeth being easily stripped. No! As stated before, modern plastics are not cheap-and-nasty. In 50 years they will be the same as they are today. If gears are used improperly, maybe beyond their capabilities (too thin, poorly formed teeth), that's a design issue, and they will wear out. So will the finest brass gears. But my last point about using a found CD-ROM 50 years from now in fairly _unused_ condition is important, as any wear inducing design flaws will not have been given to chance to work their evil. Certainly it will, it small caches (or singles) found in warehouses, estate sales, hackers that never threw the stuff away, etc.. No, they probably won't be so common that they could be found in days in any city, but they will be far from unobtainable. If the things work (or most of them - hell, even if the survival rate is just 10 percent in 50 years), no repair manuals will be needed. If you get a bum unit with no manual, go to the next one and see if it works. You will get a good one. You have to compare the N1500 to today's high end and professional models, and not the regular stuff. Your N1500 was far from "commercial grade made for the masses". And why will all 50 year old CD-ROMs go automatically bad? Will it be because of the materials of the chassis changing? Well, no, not really. Will it be because of the chips going bad? Well, some will, but certainly not all (no fineline geometries here). Will it be because of corrosion? Well, certainly some, but many will be found in a stable environment. Will the lubrication go bad? No, modern lubricants are very stable (easy to change, anyway). Will the motor go bad? Probably not - motor technolgy is quite mature. So exactly what do you think is the aspect that will damn all CD-ROMs to a broken state 50 years from now? If they are not bad, why replace? Why assume that every chip will have gone bad? There will be plenty of donors. The decay due to time alone is getting _very_ minimal, thanks to the modern materials. Use is the thing that will kill these units, far faster than time alone. "No use" results in "very little decay". "Daily use" results in "quick fatigue". William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

They are, simply because the formulations have changed across the board. You can't getthe bad plastics anymore, they just are long since out of production. Well, I made my point, and am not going to continue beating a dead horse. And how much did it cost? Probably a good week's pay... No comment anymore. Uhhh...integrated circuit technology has progressed as well, and we are not talking about cutting-edge fineline traces on the dies. And capacitor technology... I've made my point a few times over now, and this will be my last word on the matter - and I don't want this to sound like a flame, but man, you have to get a little faith in what mankind can actually accomplish. That "world of tomorrow" and "technology marches on" stuff may actually mean something... William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

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This is a trick as old as the hills (and one of the reasons the old plastics fell apart quickly). William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, Tony Duell wrote: Blame the marketing idiots and those Dogbert-brained money-grubbers above them who've convinced sheep-minded (no offense to sheep intended) consumers that they need a constant supply of things that are new and that the changes in products and capabilities have to be so fast-paced. Didn't cars reach optimum levels of comfort and luxury in the 1970's (ok, emissions were high, but think of all the pollution that results from manufacturing new cars); it's one thing to replace a car when it's failed structurally and repairing a badly rusted frame isn't an option... however, if heavier frames, etc. were used in the first place, that wouldn't be a problem. Now some builders are designing houses to be throw-away units, designed to last abotu 30 to 50 years... and with all that "smart-house" rubbish (who wants all that nonsense in a house?), I give some of them 10 years before people consider them obsolete or before everything stops working. Is super-high resolution for televisions that much of a necesity? I find a 20 year old Zenith System III still more than adequate... same for a 1973 color RCA, which presently needs a repair - the colors in the picture of the old RCA looked much better than those of the new TVs I see in stores! Is there any significant advantage of a new refridgerator to a 30 year old one? Etc... If the world would keep the population under control and people would stop multiplying like rabbits, and big-business would stop trying to convert so many 3rd world countries to nations which use more energy and more consumer products, if so many people didn't drive so far to work every day, and if so much energy wasn't wasted in the transportation and manufacture of new products, energy efficiency would not be of much importance, land "development" thats destroying the countryside and beautiful woodlands would stop, we wouldn't need to keep building new highways, etc. Of course, large highways also have military and police purposes as well, but that's not well publicized by our esteemed and intelligent (sarcasm intended) politicians. Is not the the cycle of constant growth, deemed necessary by greedy businesses and governments seeking more revenue, nothing more than insanity? Business expansion often requires more people who need more houses and cars, more highways, more land, who have more babies who will need more schools, then more jobs, then the cycle of lunacy continues until we're all living like cockroaches in overcrowded cities depending upon more man-made chemicals for food since there won't be enough farmland. ...and to think that many humans consider themselves intelligent than other creatures; strange. The solution seems so simple: make things that will last a long time and are repairable and teach consumers not to be influenced by marketing and that it's usually more sensible to get things repaired than to buy new things when they don't have a good reason to need something new (e.g. - they actually need something with different features (not just want to play with new featues as toys for their own entertainment) or what they have is irrepairable, etc.). Giving the above further thought, perhaps part of what's led to this problem of a "throw away" society has been the proliferation of con-artists in the repair field, from car mechanics (including the repair departments of car dealers) to TV repairmen to home repair contractors; far too many of them lie about things, overcharge consumers for unnecessary repairs, perform poor-quality work, etc... and they typically use their BBB (Better Business Bureau) memberships to lure gullible consumers into their traps. When one counters them on what they're doing wrong, they can have a tendency to turn rather nasty and damage one's property. Hence, the average consumers may prefer to just buy something new rather then be cheated multiple times by repair goons and be inconvenienced by a sometimes unreasonably long wait for the repair. Of course, if more people knew how to repair thigns themselves, or at least understood the concept of how things worked before having someone else repair them, the problem could be eliminated. Ok, simple solution, right? Not really, as most people who are intelligent don't want to get involved in politics, so we get a much higher percentage of imbecillic, and sometimes murderous, greedy bastards, higher than the level found in society as a whole, in elected offices, from local government officials to heads of state (e.g. - look at what's inhabiting the nuthouse^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HWhitehouse in Washington DC). I'll bet that in 50 years, there will be significantly many more 70 to 100 year old pieces of electronic equipment in working, or repairable, condition than pieces of 50 year old equipment, and that the majority of 50 year old equipment still existing at that time will be, for the most part, useless, irrepairable, scrap. -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd 410-744-4900

On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, Tony Duell wrote: This makes me wonder. How standard were the "standard" components of radios back during WWII times? Did hackers of that era also see valves and the other components that radios were being made with as very exotic or specialized? Maybe hackers 50 years from now will look at ASICs as child's play because of the unfathomable progress of technology. Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking for a six in a pile of nines... Coming soon: VCF 4.0! VCF East: Planning in Progress See http://www.vintage.org for details!

The really are no WW2 civilian radios (very few were made). People had to do with what they had before the war, until the surplus floodgate opened in 1946. Hams were shut down during the war - some even "persuaded" to sell or donate their receivers to the government (in 1941, U.S. military electronics was a crying shame). Nearly all TV development stopped and turned over to the government. In general - a bad time to be a hacker. You are thinking of the "all American five" - sets of tubes that were made for each other. They were mostly used after 1945. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

Basic lineup for the common 5 tube Am reciever that was of average performance. Over the years I've delt with dozens of recivers and not a few transmitters many of which are post WWII and pre transistor and I've found them pretty standardized in and well built or very cheap depending on intended market. Common problems were failed paper caps, Electrolytics dried up and rubber insulation dead from time and heat. All of which were easy to fix. The occasional mechanical problem was often dried/dead grease or abuse to tuning mechs often easily repaired. The best tube set I'd had was a RBO-2 shipboard AM (550-1600, 3-15mhz) rack mount tube unit that weighed about 40-50 pounds and built like a tank. Gave it way working before a move as a very useable ham RX for AM. Other military stuff like the ARC series command sets and BC series were often well built though they did have problems with them in the tropics. By time I was playing with them I'd found them useful but the circuits were to say the least not state of the art for their time and reflected mass production in a hurry. They however were valuable sources of parts for tuners and the like. I'd still buy a command set now for restore or parts. Allison

On Mon, Jun 05, 2000 at 11:07:35AM -0400, William Donzelli wrote: Geez, now you're making me want to shelve my existing 37 projects and go playing with radios. I was in my garage last week, sorting out boxes from old moves, and found that cute little spline-shaft knob from an ARC-5 of some sort that I used to have, I hope I find the ARC-5 itself next. I have a dim recollection of building my own power supply for it out of an aluminum project box, since I didn't have the official power supply, and I had to drill out some banana jacks to fit the weird mica-insulated connector on the ARC-5 since the prongs were a bit thicker. But I don't think I ever got it actually working... John Wilson D Bit

On Tue, Jun 06, 2000 at 12:16:50AM -0400, William Donzelli wrote: Dunno the #, but I think I paid about $2-$3 to Fair Radio for the knob, in the early 80s, they had plenty of command set accessories. I wonder what they have left, they're certainly still in business, although their prices have gone up bigtime. Are those the nasty latches that hold the top on? Because ... Then I guess I'm going to hell! The top was all screwed up on mine when I got it, the slides were mangled horribly, so I drilled them all out and put in pretty (I thought) brass thumbnuts instead, and drilled some vent holes while I was at it for some reason. In my defense, this was almost 20 years ago and they were hardly rare at the time! I think I paid $10 or less for the rig, which I found in the local want ads. On the plus side, I have a BC-223-AX transmitter which my grandfather supposedly schlepped back from somewhere (I don't buy the story, for his war I'd expect spark coils and coherers!!!), which appears to be brand new (still has the packing cardboard over the row of tubes), the only things that have happened to it are a bent connector, and the tuning card(s) seem to have walked off since I got it (hmm, I think I know which ex-roommate to suspect!!!). Don't know anything about it though, BC means signal corps right? It has the same annoying latches, only bigger and a lot harder to move... John Wilson D Bit

On Tue, Jun 06, 2000 at 11:48:26AM -0400, William Donzelli wrote: [... Fair Radio Sales ...] I'm still kicking myself for not buying some 4040 (or was it 4004) CPU chips, they had them for a couple of bucks, long ago... Any idea if there are tuning units available to bring it into a ham band? The one that's in there (TU-17 I think???) is for 2-3 MHz, so it missed both of the obvious choices. Not like we have enough trees for a decent 80 m wire antenna, but some day we'll move... Speaking of crazy surplus places, does anyone know if John J. Meshna is still in business? They were in Lynn, MA. They used to be the same kind of deal, they had a catalog full of weird stuff, but then lots of *really* random crap in ones and twos that you could find by poking around in the clutter at their shop. John Wilson D Bit

On Thu, Jun 08, 2000 at 01:26:13PM -0400, William Donzelli wrote: Too bad it's not really on the way anywhere, I'd love to drop on them some time but it's not worth ~14 hours each way! Ohio sure has a lot of wide open spaces... Wow! Well let me know how much you want for it, but before I commit to the deal, do you know where I can find documentation on the BC-223? I have nothing at all on it, so I don't know what it takes to feed one, and I don't want to swear I'll never modify anything until I know how dependent it is on external stuff that I'll never have (there are a couple of big gnarly multi-pin connectors on the side so I'm wondering if there's a control box or what -- even though there seem to be enough switches and knobs for everything I can think of already on the front panel). Boy I really wish I hadn't forgotten my Cantenna at an old apartment, well if it's only 10 W then I should be able to solder up a bunch of 2W carbon comp resistors and that will be good enough to play with it before sicking it on the airwaves. I can only imagine what the output impedance wants to be, with the big ceramic separate outputs. Somewhere I still have most of a roll of honest-to-god ladderline, but I don't know if a full-wave loop would fit in my yard (guessing that the impedance is a bunch higher than 50 ohms). Thanks!!! John Wilson KC1P/2 D Bit

Yes and no. The HF ("shortwave") radio equipment was nothing new to the amateur radio people. The tubes were all standard parts, manuals were very complete, and the stuff was cheap enough that a few experiments could go wrong. VHF radio was a bit different, but quite a few guys went on and got the stuff to mostly work. Anything with microwaves generally left the hams scratching their heads and giving up. Radar components and UHF radios used tubes seldom or never seen in the public sector (I have a magnetron actually marked "secret" - in 1943 that was _very_ secure). Waveguides and tuned stubs just "look like" they shouldn't work. The TV guided glide bomb stuff had dozens more tubes than anything seen by the hams. Most of the manuals for these systems were classified and never were released. There were, however, enough people that did play with these new technologies, and did things they only dreamed about before the war. As for standard parts, the (few) Germans had the best deal. Their surplus (after the war, although technically/politically it was Allied property) used very standardized parts, almost to the point of being wasteful. It meant, however, that a German ham could cobble up something easily, and true to the German tradition, the radios (and radars) were extremely well engineered. The American hams also had it good - quality surplus at dirt cheap prices, much of it never used. The U.S. tube system was very standardized, and most hams could get things to work quite easily with no real worries about parts. The British were next on the ladder - once again, lots of cheap surplus, but not quite as nice as the German or U.S. stuff. The government tube system certainly led to headaches (it is complex, to say the least), but British hams were no slouches adapting things to work, or finding what they needed. The Japanese...well...less said the better. Even the Japanese fighter and bomber pilots preffered _not_ to have the radios in their planes. I think so. Most importantly, they will have tools that are fantasy today. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

That is because the Japanese and Germans had them - no longer a secret. The Japanese actually were quite far advanced in the art of the magnetron. For that matter, SCR-268 radars (first generation U.S. searchlight and gun control radars) were being sold as surplu before the war ended, too. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

On Tue, 6 Jun 2000, Dwight Elvey wrote: There was a great documentary on The History Channel a few nights ago about the role radar played in WWII, and made a compelling case that it is the one thing that won the war. Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Looking for a six in a pile of nines... Coming soon: VCF 4.0! VCF East: Planning in Progress See http://www.vintage.org for details!

I suspect and others may comment that like many technologies it was not a single point event like having the magnetron but also the perpiheral technologies like selsyn motors, and video(wideband) amplifier design skills to complete the package. Radar is old, many years prewar but the knowledge to do the needed signal processing and presentation took longer to develop. It's the subtleties of the reflected signal that has information of greater interest beyond simple range. Extracting that and presenting it in human useable form is far from trivial. Allison

I really appreciate the wealth of knowledge represented on this group, but would like to respectfully suggest that once a conversation is off topic for both the group *and* the subject line under which it was started, that should be a very loud signal to the participants to take it elsewhere. At least change the subject line folks! Thanks, --Chuck At 01:20 PM 6/8/00 -0400, it was written:

On Sun, 4 Jun 2000, Sellam Ismail wrote: looking through some hobbyist magazines of that era and earlier, as well as talking to people who were hobbyists back then, could provide the answer... this would be interesting to discuss with the older hobbyists found at hamfests. I guess at one point finding things like enameled wire and cat's whiskers (no, these didn't come from cats) was more difficult than it is now, although at one point, it was easier than it is now, I understand. Has anyone else found that from a hobbyists perepective, modern digital electronics, with all the blasted surface mount chips and ASICS, etc., is less fun than building circuits with tubes and transistors? Of course, even finding tubes and the right transistors was a pain back in the 1970's, and one couldn't get parts one needed one could get certain components from, without "creating" a company name and title to give to the sales idiots who wouldn't even talk to, or sell, a hobbyist parts. Of course, now, with the Internet, finding parts is much easier than it was back when local electonics stores (e.g., within a couple of miles, there were at least two other places besides Radio Shack to get parts: LaFayette (typically a worse selection than Radio Shack) and an independent place called Everything Electronic that had bins of surplus items in addition to a parts counter and things like car radios. Mail order through companies listed in electroncis catalogs still seemed to be the best way to find things that were difficult to find, and they were less expensive. Just my 2-cents worth. -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd 410-744-4900

I think the CD-Audio (and thus CD-ROM, pretty much) standard will never go away completely, simply because it is so entrenched. Ten years from now, when technology leaves the 600 some odd megabyte CD in the dust, there will be a small, but almost religious, group keeping them alive. These people will be the audio types that will want to be able to hear many of the pieces of music being recorded today. Remember, many of artists that will be viewed as gods in ten years are nobodies today, but recording on CDs. There will be plenty of people that will want to get early recordings, and will keep the technology alive. There is evidence of this already. There are lots of people today that are keeping "record players" alive simply because many of the things they want to hear are only available on vinyl. The same is true with Edison cylinders, 78s, 16' transcription disks , 2 inch Quad video, slow 16 mm film, and scores of other dead media. Yes, CD-ROMS are far more complex than these, but they are well documented, and there will be spares for a very long time. And, as Eric states, it would be very possible for someone with enough resources (academic, for example) to produce a reader. I would venture to say that a well educated skilled tinker could make one. Older precision tools are getting quite easy to obtain these days, and it was those very tools that made the first players. As for 7 track tapes, well, speak up, Tim. William Donzelli aw288(a)osfn.org

On Fri, Jun 02, 2000 at 09:28:05PM -0400, William Donzelli wrote: I'm not sure the group will be so small -- 74 minutes is already on the high side for an album, I really don't think *any* band would be happy if all their fans expected them to cough up 6 hours of new songs every couple of years! We can already get much higher data density than what's possible with CDs, but for regular pop music purposes there's no real need to improve on CDs. They're physically small enough that they're too easy to lose (I don't know what the heck the minidisk folks are thinking, those things look even more likely to roll under a car seat where you'll never find them), and they hold about as much as would reasonably fit on an LP or cassette anyway. Of course, consumers are sheep so I'm sure audio CDs will be flushed in favor of something else sooner or later, but it will probably be for no good reason. John Wilson D Bit

On Sat, 3 Jun 2000 11:28:22 +0100 Gareth Knight <gaz_k(a)lineone.net> wrote: I found one a few months ago in a car boot sale in Bristol, England. I have an advert for "Internet Radio (Products) Ltd." pinned to the wall here. They were at 100-102 Beckenham Road, Beckenham, Kent BR3 4RH. The Model J70 radio is shown, MW/LW, battery operated, UKP 4.72, post and packing included. The ad was in Practical Wireless in about 1973. -- John Honniball Email: John.Honniball(a)uwe.ac.uk University of the West of England

"Clint Wolff (VAX collector)" <vaxman(a)uswest.net> wrote: I can't let that one pass! :-) I have some 17-year-old CDs, and they still play just fine. Aside from physical damage due to mishandling, the main failure mode is oxidation of the aluminum layer, which results from oxygen leaking through the lacquer on the label side of the disk, or the lacquer being defective. The *shortest* projected CD (not CD-R) lifetime which I've seen in quoted in a technical paper, assuming that the CD is manufatured properly, kept in a reasonably controlled environment, and not physically damaged, was 70 years. This was based on accelerated aging. Kodak's white paper on their CD-R media documents their accelerated aging study which leads them to project *conservatively* a 100 year lifetime.

On Sat, 3 Jun 2000, Clint Wolff (VAX collector) wrote: Well, most kids today appaently don't really have any idea what music is (even though they listen to what they somehow believe to be music), so that's a good question. (<- a sign that RDD's getting old?) In all seriousness, at least some of them will, that is, those who appreciate a wide range of music. I tend to listen to anything from classical to rock (up to the 1980's, that is, before most of it turned to noise), county, celtic, etc... even some old Frank Sinatra, Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Doris Day, various artists on 78 RPM records, etc. After all, music that some people grew up listening to as a child, if they enjoyed it, they'll want to keep it, which probably means keeping the media it's on, particularly if there's enough of it to make converting it, or buying new copies if available, a nuisance. Besides, after listening to both the CD and LP versions of some music, there were cases where the LP. even when not in perfect condition, sounded much better - less harsh... of course, the opposite holds true as well in some cases. This change is idiotic; like someone else (John Wilson?) said, it's already easy enough to lose a CD compared to an LP, and a much smaller disc would be even worse. Will they eliminate the liner notes, or just supply a magnifying glass for them? When one purchases a record or CD, one expects to be able to listen to it for many decades, and to keep changing formats in a way that will make other formats obsolete isn't good. At least, for many years, turntables could play 16, 33-1/3, 45 and 78 RPM records. Yes, Edison's recording system was at least better designed so that it would last longer. Wow, you mean someone else besides me is saying that "CD-Rot" is a real possibility? One would think that society, if it was sensible, would be trying to replace them with a more durable format, but then, we live in a wasteful throw-away society. For example, look at the morons trying to convert books from paper to "e-books;" why the men with white coats and nets are chasing after the proponents of e-books, I just don't understand. The company I used to work for, that puts many well-known scientific and medical journals on the WWW, wasn't at all interested in ways of preserving the data, and ignored my ideas for ways that they could work with libraries, etc. to not only preserve, but ensure that the data wasn't changed over time after publication... one of their clients would request changes to the content of material already published, and they'd comply! So short-sighted; blasted bizdroids. -- R. D. Davis rdd(a)perqlogic.com http://www.perqlogic.com/rdd 410-744-4900

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At 04:59 PM 6/2/2000 -0600, you wrote: Last year some of our local V.I.P'S buried a "time capsule" to be dug up in a hundred years, and which included a VHS tape. While there are hundred year old Edison cylinders around and the equipment to play them on, I doubt they will have much luck with that VHS tape. Regards Charlie Fox Charles E. Fox Chas E. Fox Video Productions 793 Argyle Rd. Windsor N8Y 3J8 Ont. Canada email foxvideo(a)wincom.net Check out "The Old Walkerville Virtual Museum" at http://www.skyboom.com/foxvideo and Camcorder Kindergarten at http://www.chasfoxvideo.com

My wife's home town is Corona, California, its claim to fame is that it has LOST the last three time capsules it buried someplace.

Does that mean that they don't remember where they buried, or that they remember but the capsules are no longer present?

Full story at, snip below. http://www.oglethorpe.edu/itcs/wanted.htm THE NINE MOST WANTED TIME CAPSULES 3. Corona, California, Time Capsules. The City of Corona seems to have misplaced a series of 17 time capsules dating back to the 1930s. Efforts to recover the capsules in 1986 were in vain. "We just tore up a lot of concrete around the civic center, "said the chairman of the town's centennial committee. A Los Angeles Times reporter has called Corona "the individual record holder in the fumbled time capsule category."