Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:46:40 -0400
Reply-To: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject: Re: Are Today's Young People Mechanical Nitwits?
In-Reply-To: <BDC48AAB-A868-428A-8BAA-6FC704469EA0@TELUS.NET>
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At 02:35 PM 8/14/2008 -0600, Gary Lee www.vwrack.com wrote:
>I am told that in the 70s there used to be tube testers and vacuum
>tubes sold at the grocery store. I guess people, just ordinary
>people, would fix their own tvs and radios. That was also a time
Definitely '60s. Fading in the '70s I think, as transistors took
over. Tubes were consumables and mounted in sockets (and on the
opposite side of the steel chassis from the fiddly bits, so other
than getting burnt they were pretty safe to deal with). There were a
gazillion table radios that all used the same set of five tubes whose
filament voltages not coincidentally added up to 117 volts -- that's
the sort of thing the drug store would carry.
The testers were about the size of an open briefcase on a stand, big
meter, bunch of dial switches, sockets for quad, octal, 7- and 9-pin
miniature, clip lead for tubes with a top contact, and a big list of
tube types with switch settings for each, maybe on a scroll behind a
window on the tester. Testing instructions printed on the
machine. So if your radio or TV got funny, you'd pull all the tubes
and stick them in a paper bag (not so many plastic bags then) and
take them to the drugstore, or Radio Shack, or Lafayette Radio, or a
repair shop maybe, and test them all. With any luck (or some
patience) you wouldn't burn yourself much, and with *decent* luck you
wouldn't have rubbed off the tube numbers, or would have wrapped a
piece of paper around them with the number on it.
There is absolutely nothing like the smell of tube electronics that's
lived in the company of smokers. Not bad, but distinctive.
When we attended John Kennedy's funeral in fall '63, we also listened
to it on a (paperback-size) Matsushita Electronics five-transistor
AM-only radio that Dad got for CONELRAD alerts. Like most (?) radios
then it had the two CONELRAD frequencies marked on the dial (Dad was
an engineer, his version of two-weeks-rations for our "shelter" --
the pantry under the cellar stairs -- was whatever was in the pantry
plus our spare 50-lb bag of Purina dog chow). Nice little radio,
orange front and gray back. Cost maybe $50 or so? Used a 9v
battery. We were far enough away that we heard it on the radio 2-3
seconds before we heard it live. That was maybe a little before the
"transistor wars" when cheap radio brands (Lloyds comes to mind)
would throw transistors at a design so they could boast about how
many there were, like 23-jewel watches. I think one or two maybe
even stuck totally nonfunctional transistors on the board. Circuit
boards (Wow! Printed Circuits!) were single-sided phenolic/paper.
Interesting times...if you get a chance to view Robert McNamera's
_The Fog of War_ you'll get to see the then SecDef forty years later
so frightened of what almost happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis
that he still can't come right out and say the words. You can see
him try, and fail. I recommend it -- I started to watch it
perfunctorily because it had to go back to the store that night, and
was absolutely riveted.
</stream of consciousness>
David
--
David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
'84 Westy "Dutiful Passage," '85 GL "Poor Relation"
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