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Dispatch 8f

The National Electronics Museum

4 Aug 2012

This museum is heavy on old military gear, radar and such.

And they had a tube tester. This brings back memories to us old folk who used to fix our parents TV sets.

And do you know what these are? I am just barely old enough to remember using one of these. Mine was not as fancy as the bottom one however.

Right next to the antique shack they had a modern amateur (ham) radio set up. They still call this type of setup a "Shack" or "Radio Shack" despite the co-opting of the name by the (nearly defunct) store chain.

Moving forward in time again. Here I am standing next to an early GPS Satellite. Boy we use the heck out of these things today don't we.

And now here was something I was surprised to see. A German "Enigma" machine. There were code encryption machines used by Germany in WWII and if you know your war history, this is quite an artifact.

Free free to read the instructions at right.

I just recently finished the Steve Jobs bio, a book I very highly recommend. So it was interesting to see the lineup of Apples early models. They even had an Apple I, though in fact, it is a replica. If you happen to have an original Apple I kicking around in your attic or something please call me. I'll be more than happy to come by and dispose of it for you.

(It would be worth about a quarter million)

Did you ever pretend your face was a radar antenna? Of course not! Only a real weirdo would do a thing like that!

As I said the place is heavy on military stuff. Like these aircraft radar systems the fit in the nosecone of military jets. They look expensive, don't they? You can tell the one above is probably an older model because it has tubes. Maybe they use the tube tester to fix it.

Go on to Dispatch 8g

The B & O Railroad Museum

Go back to Dispatch 8e

Air and Space Museum at Dulles

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Go back to Dispatch 8e

Air and Space Museum at Dulles

Go to Index

But there is also a lot of more general stuff. Here Paul makes a delicate adjustment to an old model oscilloscope. Something we all wanted (but few had) when we were first learning about electronics.

And this used to be how radios were powered. You had to have a few different voltages. There were no "Wall Warts".

OK I'm not THAT old, this was my fathers time.

Going back even further in time. They had a display of how the first radio equipment worked. Spark gap, Condensers, Coils, a Crystal which worked as a Diode with the ear phones, Telegraph Key. This is before my father's time. Maybe my grandfather or his father.