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Darren has many other excellent projects on his YouTube channel. My Hammarlund HQ-100 receiver started giving me trouble this week, and I was debating whether or not to fix the old thing. Darren's channel provided the inspiration I needed. It will be fixed!
Please subscribe to Darren's channel. And spread the word about his videos. We definitely want him to make a lot more.
Thanks Darren!
So many things from the video resonated with me:
-- The importance of building and testing, stage by stage. The narrator admits "I might have screwed that up."
-- Homebrew keyboards! Make your own keyboard springs you pathetic appliance operators!
-- Wood box.
-- Origins of ASCI
-- The scary 1970s. Indeed. I started High School in 1972.
-- Schematic errors! Oh the humanity! Erratas.
-- Appeals to the Digital Gods. (Not as powerful as The Radio Gods.)
-- A Gimmick Twin Lead.
-- "So many different disciplines went into building this thing..."
-- A taste of the home computing revolution of the 1970s.
-- Farhan is right -- he was K3BYG. But that call now seems to belong to someone else.
Don Lancaster's unofficial autobiography:
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/waywere.pdf
Clearly, Don Lancaster has The Knack!
Joh DL6ID and I have been exchanging e-mails in which we compare notes on the early homebrew television receiver of Johnny Anderson W9YEI. In 1973 on WOR New York, Jean Shepherd described a very memorable demonstration of TV conducted some three decades earlier by Anderson for teenage friends in Hammond, Indiana. Shep provided a lot of detail, but some of his recollections seemed a bit off; Shep was known for exaggerating or changing details to make a story better.
We have arrived at some conclusions about this project (but if anyone has more info, please let us know):
DID ANDERSON ACTUALLY BUILD A TV RECEIVER?
Yes, he did. This was a homebrew project, not a kit build and not the use of a receiver built and loaned for test purposes by the transmitting station. Anderson was an accomplished homebrewer whose basement, according to Shep, was filled with devices he had built. A QSL card sent by him in 1938 shows him using a "9 tube superhet" as a receiver. Shep describes Johnny -- over a period of perhaps six months -- gathering components in Chicago's electronics parts market, and building something in his basement. That sure sounds like a real homebrew project. A TV receiver kit was available, but it was very expensive, and Shep would have immediately denounced it as a non-homebrew project. Anderson homebrewed the receiver.
WHY DID HE DO THIS?
Why would a ham build a TV receiver at a time in which there were only a few experimental transmitters on the air, and no possibility of using the receiver to "work" other amateur stations? We tend to think of TV as a post-war commercial phenomenon. But in fact there was a lot of "buzz" about TV in the 1930s. Magazines were filled with TV articles, and with ads for courses that promised to prepare people for what seemed to many to be "the next big thing." The World's Fair in Chicago in 1933 and 1934 featured a demonstration of television -- Anderson, who lived in a close-in Chicago suburb, may have seen this demonstration. Television must have seemed like a do-able but difficult technical challenge, and would have attracted the interest of an advanced homebrewer like Anderson.
WHEN DID ANDERSON BUILD THE RECEIVER?
Shepherd describes a demonstration of TV in which Anderson tuned into experimental transmissions of WBKB in Chicago. WBKB's experimental transmitter W9XBK did not go on the air until August 1940. And Anderson told Shep that he had been calling in reception reports for a month or six weeks. That would push the date of the demonstration to September 1940 at the earliest. In September 1940 Anderson was 22 years old, and Shep was 19. (Here is one area in which Shep's recall is questionable -- he claims that the event took place when he -- Shep -- was 16 or 17. In fact he was older, but having the protagonists a bit younger made the story more intriguing.) If we assume that it took Anderson six months or so to build the receiver, that would push the start date of Anderson's build to around March 1940.
There was another experimental station on the air in Chicago: Zenith Corporation had W9XZV doing experimental transmissions starting on February 2, 1939. If Anderson had built the receiver a bit earlier, he could have been tuning into W9XVZ before W9XBK went on the air. But I think it was more likely that he started building in early 1940. I get the feeling that the Scozzari articles of October/November 1939 influenced his build.
WHAT PUBLICATIONS GUIDED ANDERSON?
Shep, in extolling Anderson's advanced, self-taught knowledge of electronics tells us that Anderson was at his young age already reading the IRE Journal, the monthly publication of the Institute of Radio Engineers. Joh DL6ID notes that Shep said that this publication was being sent to Anderson, indicating that he had some form of subscription. He may have also had access to back-issues in a Chicago library. Anderson was a serious consumer of technical material.
The IRE Journal had many articles about television, but they were highly theoretical. Typical of this was the December 1933 issue. Anderson probably also benefitted from more practical, build-related articles that appeared in publications like QST, Shortwave and Television, and Radio and Television.
In December 1937 QST began a series of articles on television my Marshall Wilder.
In March 1938 CW Palmer launched a series of build articles on TV receivers in the Gernsback magazine "Shortwave and Television." See photo below.
In October 1938 QST started a series of practical build articles on TV by J.B. Sherman. This series provided circuit details on how to use three different sizes of RCA oscilloscope CRTs, including the small 1 inch 913 tube.
In December 1938 QST continued with the television theme, presenting the first in a series of build articles by C.C. Schumard.
In October 1939 Peter Scozzari launched a good series of build articles in Radio and Television magazine. See photo below.
WHAT CATHODE RAY TUBE DID HE USE?
Many of the publications of the era carried projects using 2 or 3 inch CRTs. But it appears that Anderson had a smaller, 1 inch oscilloscope CRT in his project. In his 1973 broadcast, Shep repeatedly called the CRT "tiny" and refers to it as a 1 inch tube. Shep said the image produced was green, indicating a tube built for oscilloscopes. He may have used a 1 inch RCA 913 CRT Tube. See the Sherman article in the October 1938 QST.
THE DEATH OF ROSS HULL
In the middle of all this, on September 13, 1938 radio pioneer Ross Hull was electrocuted while working on his homebrew television receiver.
Oh man, we've all been there: OBSESSION with ham radio. Shep went over the top and didn't sleep all weekend when his homebrew transmitter was finally neutralized and started to put out a decent signal on 40 meter CW.
One of my favorite lines in this episode is about how, before the neutralization, the transmitter had had so many parasitics that it would continue to transmit for two hours AFTER Shep turned it off, "and all on the wrong frequencies."
I found this while searching for other Shep references to Johnny Anderson, the guy who built the TV receiver. Please let me know if you know of any other Shep references to Johnny.
Here is the program. Skip ahead to 20:50
EXCELSIOR!
I heard about this video while trying to track down information on John Stanley Anderson's 1939 television receiver. "Patrolling the Ether" is kind of hard to find. It is not really on YouTube. But there is a good BARC Vimeo video about WWII RDF efforts that includes at the end the full "Patrolling the Ether" video.
Here it is:
Thanks to BARC and to Brian Harrison for putting this together.
In the video, they discuss the invention of the Panadaptor by Dr. Marcel Wallace F3HM during World War II. I set up a very crude Panadaptor using Wallace's principals:
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2019/05/diy-waterfall-quick-and-easy-panadaptor.html
Hack-A-Day has an article about early (1930s) television. I was immediately reminded of a January 1973 Jean Shepherd show on WOR New York in which Shep talks about a kid in his neighborhood who built a very early television receiver. You can skip to about the 18 minute mark for the homebrew radio and television stuff.
In the 1973 show, Shep identifies the builder as John Anderson. The Flicklives web site lists the hams who lived around Shep in Hammond Indiana. Among them is John Stanley Anderson W9YEI. That's him.
Shep was born in 1921 and in the show he says this all took place when he was 16 or 17. So that would place these events around 1938. We see that on February 2, 1939 W9XZV -- the experimental station of Zenith Chicago -- went on the air with television. In August 1940 W9XBK, the experimental TV station of WBKB Chicago went on the air. That station was the one Johnny Anderson used to demonstrate TV to Shep and other friends.
Once again, Shep really captures the spirit of homebrew radio and the way it really captivates teenagers. He also explains -- very well I think -- the difference between true homebrew radio and kit building.
I really wish we had more details or pictures of W9YEI's TV receiver. I tried looking in the IRE Journal, but I couldn't find anything. Anyone have more info on this receiver or ham homebrew TV projects from the late 1930s?
EXCELSIOR! 73 Bill
https://hackaday.com/2022/04/10/retrotechtacular-a-diy-television-for-very-early-adopters/
https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2008/07/best-jean-shepherd-ham-radio-episode.html
http://www.flicklives.com/index.php?pg=318
https://www.earlytelevision.org/w9xbk.html
This is the second time that Todd K7TFC has sent in a comment that is so good that it gets elevated to the main blog page. When I was typing yesterday's post about how WD-40 had restored life to the hard drive in my old Tandy 1000 computer, I knew that this would stir up anti-WD-40 sentiments. I'm grateful that Todd weighed in with such a thoughtful response.
What can I say? I was young and foolish. I thought WD-40 was the answer. Now I know better. I have can of DeOxit D5 on my shelf. I only use the WD-40 on my bicycle.
Todd K7TFCApril 9, 2022 at 7:49 PM wrote:
I think even the Pope would argue his pee has already served its only real purpose: to remove unwanted substances from the body. WD-40 is useful for that purpose as well--it's pretty good at dissolving and blasting away dirt and grease from tools, hardware, or small mechanisms. That's no doubt why it worked to get your hard-drive spinning again. As a lubricant, though, it is deeply flawed.
If you have nothing else at hand, it can also substitute as an penetrating rust buster. The purpose its developers intended is coded in the name itself: "WD" stands for water displacement, and its very good at doing that. It's not so good at many of the other uses to which it's commonly put.
A very-long time ago, I worked at a company that made its own PCBs, and they had some very-precise NC machinery (programmed with punched tape in those days) for drilling and routing the boards. After a series of baffling and costly shutdowns, the culprit was discovered and WD-40 was banned entirely from the plant. The plant-maintenance guy and janitors couldn't even have any.
It was found that once completely dry, the oils and waxes in it would slowly polymerize (as they were intended), leaving behind a sticky film that protected from moisture and rust just fine, but it gummed up precision machinery. The Chief Production engineer (my father) got the company brass to ban WD-40 entirely.
Why ban it from even plant-maintenance and janitorial work? Because you couldn't keep the PCB-production crew from resorting to it in a "crisis" if they could find any at all in the building. It meant they weren't careful enough to keep the proper lubricants in stock. You could either fire them for their shade-tree-mechanic mentality, or you could ban WD-40.
Needless to say, I've kept my congenital anti-WD-40 animus alive all these years, but I do have a can I use for cleaning and water-displacement purposes. When tempted to use it otherwise, though, the memory of my father sniffing the air suspiciously for its distinctive odor flashes in my head, and I reach for something else. --73, K7TFC
The video above shows one application of the principal, but be sure to check out the IEEE article:
SolderSmoke Podcast #236 is available!
Podcast Posted on 1 April 2022:
http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke236.mp3
Winterfest! Many Boatanchors. Lots of old good analog test gear. Talk with Dean KK4DAS. Met up with Armand WA1UQO and Charles AI4OT.
SolderSmoke Podcast #236 is available!
http://soldersmoke.com/soldersmoke236.mp3
Winterfest! Many Boatanchors. Lots of old good analog test gear. Talk with Dean KK4DAS. Met up with Armand WA1UQO and Charles AI4OT.
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