Weird and Wacky Engineering
Blast from the past – Practical Wireless mags circa 1972
Clive Maxfield
3/8/2013 5:23 PM EST
In my recent blog, Mock Electronics: An Eclectic Emporium of Electronic Elements, I casually mentioned that – as a young lad – I used to enjoy building the "Take 20" projects in Practical Electronics magazine. This was because I was short of funds (and skill) and each of these projects required 20 or fewer components and cost 20 shillings or less (see also my blog on Pounds, Shillings, and Pence).
Well, you can only imagine my surprise when a reader called RadioNut (his username, obviously, not his real name … well, we can but hope) posted a comment saying:
"No," I thought, "this cannot be." But I sent an email to the original publisher of Practical Electronics, and he confirmed that this was indeed the case. My old gray brain cells are now obviously reduced to spluttering along on only two cylinders.
But wait, there's more, because an envelope from RadioNut just arrived on my desk containing three issues of Practical Wireless from 1972:
Ooooh, this takes me back. I just opened the first one from January 1972. There's no way to artificially replicate that 41-year-old magazine smell. This sort of magazine was so different back then. For a start it contains 96 pages (Good Grief, it's almost a book!). Also, in addition to the articles (this month's "Take 20, No. 32" is a Metronome project), there are so many incredibly interesting adverts – in fact, there are 20 pages of adverts before you even reach the Contents List!
Looking at the adverts itself is a journey back through time – the sorts of electronic parts and products that seemed so amazingly cool and futuristic back then – with the entire magazine (apart from the cover) being presented in glorious techni-black-and-white (grin).
This is like taking a stroll down memory lane. I know what I'm going to be reading this weekend!
If you found this article to be of interest, visit Programmable Logic Designline where – in addition to my Max's Cool Beans blogs – you will find the latest and greatest design, technology, product, and news articles with regard to programmable logic devices of every flavor and size (FPGAs, CPLDs, CSSPs, PSoCs...).
Also, you can obtain a highlights update delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for my weekly newsletter – just Click Here to request this newsletter using the Manage Newsletters tab (if you aren't already a member you'll be asked to register, but it's free and painless so don't let that stop you [grin]).
Well, you can only imagine my surprise when a reader called RadioNut (his username, obviously, not his real name … well, we can but hope) posted a comment saying:
Hi Max, great article but "Take 20" was a constructional feature of Practical Wireless, usually authored by Julian Anderson and, in later issues, David Andrews.
"No," I thought, "this cannot be." But I sent an email to the original publisher of Practical Electronics, and he confirmed that this was indeed the case. My old gray brain cells are now obviously reduced to spluttering along on only two cylinders.
But wait, there's more, because an envelope from RadioNut just arrived on my desk containing three issues of Practical Wireless from 1972:
Ooooh, this takes me back. I just opened the first one from January 1972. There's no way to artificially replicate that 41-year-old magazine smell. This sort of magazine was so different back then. For a start it contains 96 pages (Good Grief, it's almost a book!). Also, in addition to the articles (this month's "Take 20, No. 32" is a Metronome project), there are so many incredibly interesting adverts – in fact, there are 20 pages of adverts before you even reach the Contents List!
Looking at the adverts itself is a journey back through time – the sorts of electronic parts and products that seemed so amazingly cool and futuristic back then – with the entire magazine (apart from the cover) being presented in glorious techni-black-and-white (grin).
This is like taking a stroll down memory lane. I know what I'm going to be reading this weekend!
If you found this article to be of interest, visit Programmable Logic Designline where – in addition to my Max's Cool Beans blogs – you will find the latest and greatest design, technology, product, and news articles with regard to programmable logic devices of every flavor and size (FPGAs, CPLDs, CSSPs, PSoCs...).
Also, you can obtain a highlights update delivered directly to your inbox by signing up for my weekly newsletter – just Click Here to request this newsletter using the Manage Newsletters tab (if you aren't already a member you'll be asked to register, but it's free and painless so don't let that stop you [grin]).
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David Ashton
3/9/2013 3:38 AM EST
I trust you'll post some more blogs about these mags Max, and maybe a sample of some of the articles (not sure what copyright restrictions apply?). The nice thing about those days was that you needed a few simple components and a bit of veroboard, not smd soldering skills and pre-programmed uC chips. I know I generalise, and that you can do awesome things these days, but I reckon there was more satisfaction in projects in those days. Or maybe I'm just getting old....
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Max the Magnificent
3/11/2013 9:08 AM EDT
Hi David -- I'm sure I will ... it's finding the time that's the problem (sob sob)
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Bellhop
3/15/2013 2:02 PM EDT
I love "Popular Mechanics" from the '50s and '60s. The job training ads are quite interesting. Although all of those jobs are obsolete today, if one had started out then, one would have had a full career and would be comfortably retired today. I also enjoy the consumer goods of the future that never were (thank God in most cases).
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wayne_h
3/15/2013 2:44 PM EDT
In North America in the 60's and 70's we had Hugo Gernsback's Radio Electronics, and there was also Electronics World, both full of ads. As a young hobbyist I think the ads for the mail order schools made a big impression on me, "Get more education or get out of Electronics - that's my advice" was the slogan for one of them. I think my destiny in getting a Master's degree was sealed from that point onwards.
I look at those old magazines from time to time and find the projects fascinating, a time when electronics was NOT everywhere and in everything. And the circuit designs were alternately clever or naiive.
Later in Canada we got Electronics Today, which was a localized version of a British magazine Electronics Today International. In the library at the Northern Telecom R&D labs where I worked I had access to the British Wireless World all the way back to the late 1950's, and how I would have loved to grab the whole set when our company collapsed.
Then in the late 70's the Dutch magazine Elektor came available, and I have happily subscribed to the UK edition ever since. Maybe today not as good as it was in the 80's and 90's, but still stellar.
Ah the memories of being a newbie hobbyist!
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WKetel
3/16/2013 1:17 AM EDT
I often enjoy reading the older publications, particularly the technical ones. I inherited a stack of QST magazines from the 1960s, and some of the projects would still be useful today, but not with 7400 series TTL parts. What I found most impressive is the proportion of technical articles relative to the non-technical articles. I get the serious impression that the hobby is going dumber. Or at least that the target readers are much less tecnically literate.
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sudo
3/17/2013 11:16 PM EDT
Ah, the olden days when I was drooling over a high frequency germanium pnp transistor, equivalent to several weeks or even months of my pocket money... Does that place my youth, in time? :-)
When I do a clean-up, looking for something or (banish the thought!) moving houses, I sometimes come across some old electronics or computer mags and I end up reading them. Usually, at that time, my wife walks past, slowly shakes her head, lets out a sigh and she wryly remarks, "I thought you were {insert important activity here}".
Of course, it's impractical to keep all the old magazines and if I did, I'd probably be featured in the TV series "Hoarders" or similar. So, every time moving house or at a major clean-up, the collection shrinks a bit but I always make a point of keeping some of the juciest electronics magazines, plus a few just in random fashion.
Unfortunately, a few years back, my collection got severely pruned. Coptotermes acinaciformis made sure of that. :-(
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DaStargzer
3/18/2013 10:07 AM EDT
Going back to the 50s and 60s there was Popular Electronics and Electronics Illustrated. I still have an advertisement from one of the two (I think it was PE) for Shakespeare Antennas as a prime example of sexism in the 60s in advertiseing. A nice-looking buxom blonde in jeans with sunglasses on her forehead had her hand wrapped around the antenna shaft with the caption "What a body! What a build! And boy, what performance! the Shakespeare model xxxx is the up-top antenna for on-top people." As a pre-teen that went over my head (like the "Adult Conspiracy" in Piers Anthony's Xanth series), but later I go to to see the pun. I still have a lot of copies of those and some copies of Radio-Electronics in the basement, as well as a few Byte magazines. Then there's the all those 7400 TTL chips ...
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dmoisan
3/27/2013 6:26 PM EDT
I really wish Google Books had these online as they do Popular Mechanics. Elementary Electronics, Radio-Electronics, Popular Electronics, all of these would be fascinating to the new crowd of makers. It'd be amazing. Many of these titles are truly orphaned and in danger of being lost forever.
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Asad.Asif
3/30/2013 1:58 AM EDT
Agreed! Wish there were digital copies (scanned or otherwise) of old electronics related magazines.
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