THE TRANSISTOR

A picture report of progress

A tiny amplifying device first announced by Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1948 is about to appear as a versatile element in telephony.

Each step in the work on the transistor . . . from original theory to initial production technique . . . has been carried on within the Laboratories. Thus, Bell scientists demonstrate again how their skills in many fields, from theoretical physics to production engineering, help improve telephone service.
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Next time you bitch about trying to get your video blogging software to work, check out what this guy had to scrape together to get an amateur TV station running in 1949. He built a garage full of equipment and had three giant antennas.

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Radio ‘Ham’ Builds TV Station

California amateur sends voice and picture over transmitter made from $500 worth of war-surplus parts.

By Andrew R. Boone

PULSING through the California skies from a weather-beaten back-yard shack, the image of a beautiful brunette flows into television receivers around San Francisco Bay. The boys who have seen her call the vision Gwendolyn.

Reproduced by a collection of secondhand tubes and war-surplus video equipment, Gwendolyn represents the first standard TV image broadcast successfully and repeatedly by an amateur. Soon, from the same station, W6JDI-TV, radio ham Clarence Wolfe, Jr. hopes to televise live images.

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Things You Never Knew About Your Fountain Pen

A leaky 1884 pen let loose the flood tide of American ingenuity that has kept the world writing.

By Richard Match

FROM Murmansk to Timbuktu the American fountain pen, streamlined, durable and leakproof, is a symbol of U.S. technological excellence. After World War II our trim Parkers, Sheaffers, Watermans, Eversharps brought $400 each on the black market overseas. Today Japanese and Italian street vendors hawk shoddy counterfeits; the Russians turn out imitation Parker 51’s which cost more than the real thing. But American manufacturers make 75 percent of the world’s output—some 200 million pens a year.

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Coin Operated Phone for Home
TO PREVENT excessive phone bills and to lessen the “Can I use your phone” nuisance, a coin-operated lock can now be obtained for either the French cradle type phone or the standard type. In operation, a nickel is inserted in the slot after removing the receiver from the hook and the plunger is pushed down with the finger.
The device can be applied in a few seconds to all types of standard phones. It is used in offices, stores and homes where, the meter system is employed.

Devise Tiny Walking Radio

A NOVEL radio transmitter is used by representatives of the Columbia Broadcasting System to conduct roving interviews. The device consists of an antenna and radio frequency oscillator mounted in a cane, a microphone on a wrist strap, batteries in a money belt, and an audio amplifier and modulator in a binocular case. Working range is one mile.

Deaf Hear Through Head Bone

AN INVENTION for hearing by the conduction of sound through the bony structure of the head instead of through the outer ear was successfully demonstrated recently before the engineering society in New York.

How the contraption is worn is illustrated in the photo below. The heart of the instrument is a special transmitter worn on the clothing which intercepts the words spoken to the deaf or partially deaf person. This transmitter is connected to the oscillator which presses against the bony part of the cranium when the listening is to be done. Ordinarily, however, the oscillator is worn like a necklace around the throat as illustrated in the photo below.

The printout actually looks really good, though at 3 feet per hour it isn’t the most useful thing in the world.

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Pictures by Radio

RADIO facsimile, the process by which pictures and printed matter are transmitted over the air for identical reproduction at the receiving end, is rapidly advancing as a new and valuable service of radio broadcasting. An experimental facsimile network has been established as part of the Mutual Broadcasting System, and already three important stations, WGN, WOR and WLW, are transmitting on regular schedule. Factory-made receivers of medium price are being produced by a large radio set manufacturer and are now advertised and sold by department stores.

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Desk-Size Facsimile Machine

Smaller than a typewriter, a miniature self-contained telegraph “office” provides the executive with 24-hour telegram service. Telegrams are sent and received simply by pushing a button. They don’t even have to be typewritten. You simply write out the message on a blank, wrap the blank around the drum of the machine and turn it on. A scanner views the message and sends it to the addressee where an exact copy is reproduced by an identical machine. Transmission time of about 2-1/2 minutes is required to handle a full message. The call is routed through the main office of Western Union, which directs the message to its destination and bills the sender.

Old And New Communication Methods Combined

Old and new methods of communication were combined recently when a Cincinnati radio station used carrier pigeons to speed pictures of a baseball game between Cincinnati Rends and Pittsburgh Pirates to its studio for immediate transmission.

This is the earliest reference I’ve seen to a CCD in a consumer product.

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Amazing New Picturephone
A step closer to in-person

By W. Stevenson Bacon

There’s a brand-new Picturephone in the works that will one day give you instant total communication with anyone you call. What makes it fascinating is the amazing versatility of the delicately engineered unit that holds both picture and camera tubes.

Unlike the old Picturephone, this one gives you a choice of wide-angle picture, long-range shot, or electronic close-up. Pull a lens out and aim it downward, and you can send pictures, drawings, or printed documents. If you wish, you can push a button to see what you’re sending. And if a call catches you in the shower you can simply switch over to three-bar test pattern.

Bell Telephone Laboratories packed all this into an 8-by-11-by-14-inch box by using tiny integrated circuits that incorporate hundreds of transistors and other components on small chips of silicon. In fact, the only vacuum tubes used are the picture and camera tubes. And even the camera tube makes use of semiconductors.

The camera tube is a revolutionary new type that uses a target (the part of the tube that converts incoming light to electrical charges) made of silicon and containing 300,000 light-sensitive diodes formed on it by integrated circuit techniques. It’s the first time that semiconductors and vacuum tubes have been combined to make one device.

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Dictating Machines to Use Magnetic Tape

With the development of the steel tape method of sound recording, present day dictaphones may soon become obsolete. In demonstrations at the Century of Progress sound was stored in the magnetic ribbon for only a few seconds, but engineers believe it possible to construct a simplified dictating machine set along similar lines.

With the use of large rolls of the steel tape, there would be no need to change records as frequently as in the present apparatus. Court proceedings could be stored indefinitely.

This is a hardware packet switched network, kinda like IP circa 1951.

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Dial Switches Message Tubes
By Dialing a number, workers in a Connecticut factory can send written messages and even metal samples to various parts of the plant in about a minute’s time. They are using the familiar old pneumatic tube, the hissing clanging gadget used to make change in many department stores.

This pneumatic tube is different. Wehere older systems required separate tubes to each station, this one has an automatic dial exchange, just like a modern telephone central office, making a few tubes do the work of many. Each carrier has numbers that can be set to guide it automatically to any one of the nine stations that make up the first American installation at the Housatonic plant of the Bridgeport Brass Co. Eventually there will be 20 stations.

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