If Junior is looking for ideas for the science fair, here are some oldies but goodies, from the August 1963 issue of Boys’ Life. Any of these will certainly earn Junior a nice participation ribbon. But if you’re looking for more spectacular ideas, some of which are very easy, and some of which are very complicated, be sure to check out our full category of Science Fair Ideas.
Sixty years ago this month, the August 1963 issue of Popular Electronics carried the plans for this outboard BFO, dubbed the “Code Bander.” The two-transistor circuit would add CW and SSB capabilities to any receiver, making them useful for the novice ham.
No internal connections were required to the radio, because this BFO operated not at the receiver’s IF frequency, but on the same frequency as the received signal. It covered 3.5 – 4 MHz, the 80 meter ham band. It was usable on the other ham bands thanks to the harmonics.
The designer and author is familiar to our readers, Hartland Smith, W8VFD, later W8QX. Smith became a silent key in 2022, but we were privileged to exchange a few e-mails with him prior to his death.
This one-tube circuit appeared in the British Practical Wireless 80 years ago this month, August 1943. It made the best of wartime parts shortages, since the single tube, a P220, did double duty as both RF and AF amplifier. A fixed crystal was used as detector.
It had been sent to the magazine by R.J. Amblin of Bath, England, who reported that with 18 volts of anode (plate) voltage, it gave good volume through the headphones, and he was able to pull in the BBC Home Service with as little as 1.5 volts. For normal listening, he left it at 4.5 volts, which proved quite satisfactory.
As John F. Kennedy famously said, we do some things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. We previously documented the hard way to start a library. And we recently discovered the hard way to decorate a baseball.
My family recently visited the world’s largest ball of paint, near Anderson, Indiana. (No, I didn’t coordinate the color of my shirt–that was just a happy coincidence.) At the core of this massive ball of paint is a baseball, that Mike Carmichael and his family began painting in 1977. Over the years, over 25,000 layers of paint cover the ball, which now weighs in at over 4,000 pounds, as attested to by the scale from which it now hangs. As the ball grew, Carmichael constructed a building to house it, and showed us the steel beam frame from which it hangs.
The ball is open to the public, and Carmichael is eager to show it off. In fact, visitors are often invited to add a coat of paint. We arrived at a time when the ball was wet from an earlier coat of paint that morning, so we weren’t able to contribute this time. He suggests that visitors contact him in advance, to ensure an opportunity to paint. He can be contacted through the ball’s official website.
Carmichael is a veteran and, not surprisingly, a house painter by trade.
Admission is free, although free-will donations are welcome. It’s open to the public 7 days a week from 9:00 to 5:00. We became aware of the existence of the ball of paint due to seeing hundreds of smiling sun lawn ornaments on lawns throughout the region. All of them were created by Carmichael, who explained that he began making them in 2020 during COVID as a way to bring a bit of joy to the community. They are also for sale. Of course, we purchased one, which will soon be on display at OneTubeRadio.com world headquarters.
Sixty years ago, if you wanted a small television that you could watch anywhere, it was available, but it wasn’t cheap. Shown here, in the August 1963 issue of Electronics World, is Sony’s ad for its Micro-TV. Weighing in at only 8 pounds, the 25-transistor set could be powered with AC, DC, or an optional rechargeable battery pack.
The retail price was only $189.95. According to this inflation calculator, that works out to about $1897 in 2023 dollars. If you lived in an area with one of those elusive UHF channels, you weren’t out of luck, because an optional UHF adaptor (and yes, that’s an alternate spelling) was available for only $49.95 extra. The prices weren’t given, but other accessories (such as the rechargeable battery) were available, including a “luggage carrying case.”
I guess I would pay extra for the carrying case. If I was taking my $1897 TV with me on vacation, I’d want it to be well protected in transit.
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A hundred years ago this month, this illustration appeared on the cover of the August 1923 issue of Radio News. Most radio listeners had graduated beyond the crystal set, but this gentleman purports to have a super crystal set that can not only pull in a station 2000 miles away, but provide loudspeaker volume.
His friend is apparently convinced, but he doesn’t see the man’s confederate under the table, actually pulling in the program with a modern vacuum tube set.
A hundred years ago, radio was rapidly becoming a national phenomenon, and if you didn’t already own a radio, you would have one soon. If you lived in Omaha, this ad from the Omaha Morning Bee, August 25, 1923, showed you that you could get everything you needed at the newly expanded radio department of the Brandeis Store.
The easiest way to get started on a budget would be the Little Gem crystal set. For only $10.45, you would get not only the radio, but also headphones and aerial wire.
The General Electric crystal set was $5.95, but by the time you bought headphones and antenna wire, the price was probably about the same.
If you were well heeled, you could get a complete three-tube Radiola, complete with batteries, tubes, antenna, and tubes, for $142.50.
If you need something to compare those prices to, this grocery ad appeared on the same page. A yard of spaghetti tubing would set you back a dime, but three packages of real macaroni would be a quarter.
Shown here, in the August 1963 issue of Radio-Electronics, is the path of a telephone call made from Washington to London, as part of that year’s Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association (AFCEA) convention. The call was carried by conventional telephone lines at the beginning and end, but between Goose Bay, Newfoundland, and Flyingdales, England, it was a series of 13 hops over Canada, Greenland, Iceland, and Britain, via tropospheric scatter.
While not identified in the article, the system appears to be the North Atlantic Radio System.
For a snapshot of grocery prices in 1949, this ad for A&P stores appeared in the August 12, 1949 edition of the Chapel Hill (NC) Weekly.
The basics of a good dinner could be put together for about $2.29. Two pounds of roast beef would be $1.30, which could be served with two pounds of green beans for a quarter. A loaf of bread would be 18 cents. A pound of grapes was 15 cents, and a pound of coffee was 41 cents.
That sounds like a bargain, but there’s been a lot of inflation since 1949. According to this inflation calculator, that $2.29 works out to $29.36 in 2023 dollars. Maybe we’ll put back that roast beef and instead get some fish for 33 cents a pound.
A hundred years ago this month, the August 1923 issue of Science and Invention included a number of pointers for making the most of vacation time radio. The magazine advised against just storing the radio away and waiting for your return.
For example, a self-contained set with a loop antenna was perfect for the job, as shown in figure 1. If you need an antenna, figure 2 showed one way of putting it up, using a kite. If you didn’t feel like flying a kite, you could possible use the body of your car as the antenna, with a stake driven into the earth to serve as ground, as shown in figure 3. If you’re lucky, there will be a fence, which you can use as in figure 4. The car battery can probably be used, as shown in figure 5.
We’ve talked previously about using trees as antennas, and this idea is shown in figure 6. Figure 7 shows how you can put a wire, insulated by a rubber tube, underwater. And finally, figure 8 shows an idea before its time, namely, the slinky antenna, not unlike the one we showed previously, but prior to the invention of the slinky.
