Old Tech thread

[Vince W]

Did anyone else indulge in this hobby? Bonus nerd points if you built it yourself.

My uncle built his and we would spend hours trying to get a clear signal. It was always a thrill to find someone new out there.

 

[Pyan]

This was my first stereo amplifier. You bought the bits (1 pre-amp and controls, 1 power supply and 2 power amplifiers), then wired them up and built a box to keep out the dust. My dad, who was a senior maintenance engineer for the BBC Transmitter Service, helped me build it, then we teamed it up with a Garrard SP25 record deck and a pair of Wharfedale Linton 2 speakers. Not the most sophisticated of setups, but I thought it was brilliant.

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[Vince W]

This was my first stereo amplifier. You bought the bits (1 pre-amp and controls, 1 power supply and 2 power amplifiers), then wired them up and built a box to keep out the dust. My dad, who was a senior maintenance engineer for the BBC Transmitter Service, helped me build it, then we teamed it up with a Garrard SP25 record deck and a pair of Wharfedale Linton 2 speakers. Not the most sophisticated of setups, but I thought it was brilliant.

View attachment 55379

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That's pure class.

 

[Foxbat]

Did anyone else indulge in this hobby? Bonus nerd points if you built it yourself.

My uncle built his and we would spend hours trying to get a clear signal. It was always a thrill to find someone new out there.

A friend of mine (sadly dead now) was heavily into radio and even managed to contact the space shuttle one time I think around the late 1980s (one of the astronauts was a radio ham). I have no idea if he built his rig himself but it looked quite impressive.

The most surprising thing about this friend of mine was that he had an incredibly bad stutter but he used to wear a device, kind of like a plastic tube. One end was attached to his throat and the other went in his ears. It improved his speech no end. I'm no biologist but I presume this device in some way was related to the Eustacian Tube.

 

[CupofJoe]

Back in the 70s and 80s my dad had contacts inside the Polish [and I think Russian?] Embassies. Anyway, he could get radio valves that no-one else could. So packets marked Fragile in English and Cyrillic arrived every few months, usually followed by he and I taking a trip to a barn or shed that was full of glowing radio gear. I wish I'd paid more attention.

 

[mosaix]

This was my first stereo amplifier. You bought the bits (1 pre-amp and controls, 1 power supply and 2 power amplifiers), then wired them up and built a box to keep out the dust. My dad, who was a senior maintenance engineer for the BBC Transmitter Service, helped me build it, then we teamed it up with a Garrard SP25 record deck and a pair of Wharfedale Linton 2 speakers. Not the most sophisticated of setups, but I thought it was brilliant.

View attachment 55379

View attachment 55380 ..................View attachment 55381

Wharfedale speakers were the best. Mine were stolen, along with the rest of my stereo system, when I was burgled in 1972.

Some of my LPs were also taken and for years it irritated me that someone was listening to my LPs on my stereo. Come to think of it, it still does!

 

[Vertigo]

I remember when I was about 10 stringing this 50 odd metre length of enamelled copper wire between our house and the top of a Cedar at the back of our garden and wiring it to my first crystal set. I was so excited that I had a tunable radio set that that I could listen to on some ancient (even then) ex army headphones with not a battery in sight! This would have been mid '60s.

An ancient friend of my father's used to build all his own electronic kit at that time (he was the one who gave me the parts and instructions for the crystal set) and he built his own transceivers for ham radio. He lived close to the Solent (south coast of the UK) and used to chat with the fishermen out at sea. One day a government official came round demanding he pay for a radio transmitter licence fee whereupon he turned round to the (young) government official and told him he had been transmitting since before this lad had been born and before the government had even considered charging licencing fees and he was d****d if he would start paying for the privilege now. The young government official spluttered that that was against the law and my dad's friend, a sprightly man in his late eighties at the time, said fine they could come and arrest him and put him in gaol if they wanted but he wasn't paying any d****d licence fee. I was actually present at the time; a little ten-year-old gaping in shock that someone would defy authority like that! He never heard from them again and continued chatting with his fishermen friends!

He also used to ride this old Cotton motorbike (in a cloud of smoke) and half the parts for it he made himself!

 

[Foxbat]

Wharfedale speakers were the best. Mine were stolen, along with the rest of my stereo system, when I was burgled in 1972.

Some of my LPs were also taken and for years it irritated me that someone was listening to my LPs on my stereo. Come to think of it, it still does!

Being burgled stinks!

I'd be severly pissed if somebody stole my Mission 773s. They're over 20 years old now and still sound great.

 

[Vince W]

Back in the 70s and 80s my dad had contacts inside the Polish [and I think Russian?] Embassies. Anyway, he could get radio valves that no-one else could. So packets marked Fragile in English and Cyrillic arrived every few months, usually followed by he and I taking a trip to a barn or shed that was full of glowing radio gear. I wish I'd paid more attention.

Say what you will, but Soviet/Russian valves were top notch. They're still worth a mint for repairing old valve amps, radios, and such.

 

[mosaix]

Being burgled stinks!

I'd be severly pissed if somebody stole my Mission 773s. They're over 20 years old now and still sound great.

What was even more irritating was that they stole Volume 1 of The Blues but left me with Volume 2!

I replaced my Wharfedale speakers with Marston Hall Annexes because Wharfedales were in short supply at the time. I wish I'd waited. The Annexes are ok but haven't got quite the same tone as the Wharfedales had.

 

[Foxbat]

At least you know I'm not your burglar because I'd have definitely taken both volumes

 

[Foxbat]

Say what you will, but Soviet/Russian valves were top notch. They're still worth a mint for repairing old valve amps, radios, and such.

I think the Russians might be the only ones still making them. JSC Svetlana in St petersburg is reputed to make the best quality ones today.

 

[Anthoney]

An interesting piece on early cassette tech.

 

[Caledfwlch]

High definition TV is seen as a modern invention, yet I seem to recall reading that John Logie baird actually invented HD in the 40s or 50s!!
He also invented a higher quality TV transmission system - its been so long since CRTs were the standard type of TV that I forget the old terminally but the "lines" that make up a crt picture, his preferred system had more of them iirc, and when they set up the BBC as the uks first television service despite his arguments, the Whitehall mandarins went for the lower quality option as it was cheaper. He also invented colour TV around the same time.

So with a bit of forward thinking and investment the UK could very well have had a full colour high definition television service in the 1950s or 60s!!
Makes you wonder what we would have now had that foresight and development been present!!

Oh, I was at a friend's the other day and the 80s film about a mermaid, Splash was on - Tom hanks characters apartment appeared to have a TV that was very nearly flat screen!!! Really, shockingly thin - was this real tech or out of camera shot, was their a large box with all the crt gubbins inside it, and the screen simply perched on top rather than at the front as was usual?

 

[CupofJoe]

Oh, I was at a friend's the other day and the 80s film about a mermaid, Splash was on - Tom hanks characters apartment appeared to have a TV that was very nearly flat screen!!! Really, shockingly thin - was this real tech or out of camera shot, was their a large box with all the crt gubbins inside it, and the screen simply perched on top rather than at the front as was usual?

What it may have been was a prism or mirror Display. There is a smaller [but usually fairly big for the time] CRT lying on its back facing up showing a reversed picture. Above it, there is a mirror at a slight angle to give the big screen. I remember a friend having one in the 80s and it did give a huge [60+ inch] picture but it had the same standard resolution picture. It looked terrible unless you were on the other side of the room. So it was great for a football-night-with-the-boys where twenty people could watch at once but truly awful if you want to see the dimbles on Krk Douglas' chin.

 

[Foxbat]

What it may have been was a prism or mirror Display. There is a smaller [but usually fairly big for the time] CRT lying on its back facing up showing a reversed picture. Above it, there is a mirror at a slight angle to give the big screen. I remember a friend having one in the 80s and it did give a huge [60+ inch] picture but it had the same standard resolution picture. It looked terrible unless you were on the other side of the room. So it was great for a football-night-with-the-boys where twenty people could watch at once but truly awful if you want to see the dimbles on Krk Douglas' chin.

Rear Projection is what we used to call them. I've helped a friend install one (you have to set up the convergence). Then, he upgraded to a CRT overhead projector with a 10 foot motorised screen attached to the wall. It dropped down when you hit the power on the projector. The screen was easy. The projector weighed 75 kilos and it took three of us to lift it onto its brackets. It was a complete nightmare to set up. You had to set up according to distance, convergence and a host of other things. After a few hours of trying to get it right, he turned to me and said, 'I suppose we'd better read the manual then.' I just nodded wearily.

 

[Danny McG]

I wonder if we'll ever get phones like this prediction...

 

[Ursa major]

As it happens, I realised very early on (well before I got one of my own) that mobile phones do provide an escape that, sometimes, the original sort of land-line phones cannot: you can switch them off and/or put them out of earshot. (I'm doing that now.)


** -

 

[Pyan]

As it happens, I realised very early on (well before I got one of my own) that mobile phones do provide an escape that, sometimes, the original sort of land-line phones cannot: you can switch them off and/or put them out of earshot. (I'm doing that now.)

And there's a phrase that has just about, or will soon have, disappeared: "Oh, I've taken the phone off the hook"...

 

[-K2-]

As it happens, I realised very early on (well before I got one of my own) that mobile phones do provide an escape that, sometimes, the original sort of land-line phones cannot: you can switch them off and/or put them out of earshot. (I'm doing that now.)
** -

Are you sure?

Spoiler

(I'll not derail the thread posting the video outside the spoiler... past asking you, 'Are you sure your old rotary-dial phone really turned off the microphone when you hung it up?')

K2