Today in Science History -
 Regardless of your position on the appropriateness
of actions taken by world governments and private entities regarding the COVID 19
debacle, if you truly do "believe the science" as we were all admonished to do,
then you are obligated to avail yourself of validated, relevant data. Those of us
who had researched the issue and arrived at our own conclusions early on were routinely
condemned and demonized for daring to buck the official narrative. By all accounts
we should have expired long ago from the virus while the believers enjoy practically
eternal life from being vaxxed ... and revaxxed ... and revaxxed... Seems the opposite
has happened. Sadly, many people still have not exposed themselves to information
from other than the perpetrators of the deed. This presentation by
Dr. David Martin, at the International
COVID Summit | 2023 European Parliament will shock you (~15 minutes) regardless
of your beliefs. The level of deception and lying has been epic - with catastrophic
results. If you still enthusiastically support the official narrative, fear not,
your heroes will not face any penalty. How many weeks will be needed next time to
"flatten the curve?"
 I was first introduced to the
Simpson 260 volt-ohmmeter (VOM) in the radar shop where I was assigned in the
USAF. Here is the modern version of that classic, the Simpson 260-8 VOM; it looks
a lot like the original. Here is an advertisement that I scanned out of my copy
of the July 1944 QST magazine. It highlights the precision to which its
meter movement pivots are manufactured. "While Simpson Electric Company, chartered
in 1934, is a firm with a distinguished past, it is just as importantly an organization
with a dynamic present and a definite future." There is an entire website dedicated
to the history of the Simpson 260. The famous 260 Volt-Ohm-Milliammeter put Simpson
on the map and cemented a reputation for quality that still defines Simpson in the
marketplace today." You can still buy a brand new Simpson 260 (-8) from Amazon -
and it isn't cheap - or grab a vintage Simpson Model 260 on eBay for under $100...
 Werbel Microwave, a designer and manufacturer
of RF and microwave power couplers, dividers, terminations, and DAS equipment, introduces
the Model D−2065−N from Werbel Microwave is a
2−way power splitter covering the continuous bandwidth of 500 MHz to 6 GHz.
The product features low insertion loss of 0.9 dB, high isolation of 22 dB
and excellent return loss performance of 19 dB. Tight phase and amplitude matching
between outputs. Aluminum body with stainless steel N(F) connectors. Small size,
only 0.75 in thick, allows for dense stacking in tight spaces. Werbel Microwave's
catalog of directional couplers and power splitters / combiners are high performance
at an affordable price point. Our original design. Click here for the C-9001-8.5
spec sheet. About Werbel Microwave In-House Manufacturing Capability Werbel Microwave
started in 2014 humbly working out of a one-car garage. Since then we have grown
to occupy a 1300 square foot office and shipped over 10,000 products to date...
 Most of these matches of the devices and
its inventor are pretty easy for people who have been around electronics for any
length of time (well, not if the length of time is only a day or two), but there
are a couple that just might stump you. This "Electronics
Inventors Quiz" appeared in the November 1963 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine, so you won't be challenged with knowing the inventors of the LCD or MEMS
devices, but neither will you have to know who came up with the abacus or the Archimedes
screw :-). I managed to score 100%, but that was admittedly partly luck in deciding
between two men for items "B" and "C." The other eight should be a piece of cake
for most RF Cafe visitors...
 With more than 1000
custom-built symbols, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio
Symbols available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings!
Every object has been built to fit proportionally on the provided A-, B- and C-size
drawing page templates (or can use your own). Symbols are provided for equipment
racks and test equipment, system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, and schematics.
Unlike previous versions, these are NOT Stencils, but instead are all contained
on tabbed pages within a single Visio document. That puts everything in front of
you in its full glory. Just copy and paste what you need on your drawing. The file
format is XML so everything plays nicely with Visio 2013 and later...
 Alliance Test Equipment sells
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visit Allied Test Equipment today to see how they can help your project.
 The decade of the 1960s was probably the
heyday of television. Household incomes had been steadily rising since the end of
World War II while inflation was relatively low. The Korean War was over and
until around 1965 the country was not on a serious war footing. Game shows, soap
operas, shows depicting non-dysfunctional families, variety show formats, non-woke
cartoons, movies, and newscasts that didn't insult half the country with biased
coverage fed the country's appetite for wholesome, useful entertainment. Once violent
race riots and hippie anti-establishment protests became a major threat to safety
and civic deportment, people monitored radio and television to keep abreast of events.
In accord with rapidly improving television sets were advances in
antenna technology. Viewers wanted the best possible picture and audio, and
were willing to pay dearly for it. Through around the end of the 20th century, after
which cable dominated as a transmission medium, over-the-air broadcasts in increasingly
crowded RF environments made higher performance antennas even more necessary...
 "Many situations arise in which an antenna
needs to dynamically reconfigure its center frequency or beam pattern. In some cases,
this can be done with a steerable, multi-element antenna array, but it's often not
a viable solution for various reasons. As an alternative, a team of electrical engineers
in the Penn State College of Engineering devised an innovative design for a reconfigurable
patch antenna dubbed a
reconfigurable compliant mechanism antenna (rCMA). The antenna, which leverages
the inherent elastic properties of selected material to create a desired motion
through controlled deformation, is designed to operate up to 10 GHz. These
compliant mechanisms can be made as a planar structure from a single material yet
still achieve multi-axis motion. Further, they can be designed as a full structure
with minimal or even no assembly, require no lubrication, and their reliability
is high, as it's based on the elastic properties of the material..."
 Amateur radio station operators seemed to
always be amongst the first to lose their rights in time of war. Governmental power
brokers - from unelected local bureaucrats on up to presidents - love to demonstrate
their influence over citizens when the opportunity arises. The
Radio Act of 1912 revoked the rights of amateur radio stations to operate, and
in some cases authorized the confiscation of radio equipment for use by the government.
Permission was not restored until 1919, after World War I. Amateurs took it
on the chin again in World War II with revocation of licenses. In this 1917
article in The Electrical Experimenter magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback
makes the case for permitting "our red-blooded boys be trusted to assist our officials
in running down spies." "...we realize how absurd it is to close all privately owned
radio stations during the war," says he. It fell on deaf ears, as usual. As the
now mayor of Chicago once famously said, "You never want a serious crisis to go
to waste..."
 Anatech Electronics offers the industry's
largest portfolio of high-performance standard and customized
RF and microwave filters and filter-related products for military, commercial,
aerospace and defense, and industrial applications up to 40 GHz. Three new
filter models have been introduced - a 1176 MHz / 1575 MHz ceramic duplexer with
an 18 MHz minimum bandwidth, a 1616 - 1626.5 MHz cavity bandpass filter with
TNC female connectors, and a 4900 MHz bandpass filter with N-type male / N-type
female connectors. Custom RF power filter and directional couplers designs can be
designed and produced with required connector types when a standard cannot be found,
or the requirements are such that a custom approach is necessary...
 The
International Geophysical Year (IGY) was an international scientific project
that took place from July 1, 1957, to December 31, 1958. It was a collaborative
effort involving scientists from around the world to conduct research in various
fields of geophysics. The IGY was organized in response to a proposal by the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU) to promote international cooperation in the
study of the Earth and its environment. The project aimed to advance our understanding
of Earth's physical properties, including its atmosphere, oceans, and solid Earth.
During the IGY, scientists conducted research in a wide range of disciplines, such
as meteorology, seismology, glaciology, oceanography, and solar physics. They used
cutting-edge technologies and established numerous research stations across the
globe to gather data. One of the most significant achievements of the IGY was the
International Geophysical Year Antarctic Program. Several countries established
research bases in Antarctica, leading to significant discoveries about the continent's
geology, weather patterns, and wildlife...
 It was a lot of work, but I finally finished
a version of the "RF & Electronics Schematic & Block Diagram Symbols" that
works well with Microsoft Office™ programs Word™, Excel™, and Power Point™.
This is an equivalent of the extensive set of amplifier, mixer, filter, switch,
connector, waveguide, digital, analog, antenna, and other commonly used symbols
for system block diagrams and schematics created for Visio™. Each of the 1,000 or
so symbols was exported individually from Visio in the EMF file format, then imported
into Word on a Drawing Canvas. The EMF format allows an image to be scaled up or
down without becoming pixelated, so all the shapes can be resized in a document
and still look good. The imported symbols can also be UnGrouped into their original
constituent parts for editing. Check them out!
 Withwave manufactures an extensive line
of metrology quality coaxial test cable assemblies, connectors (wave-, end-, vertical-launch,
board edge, panel mount), calibration kits (SOLT), a
fully automated
4-port vector network analyzer (VNA) calibrator, between- and in-series connector
adaptors, attenuators, terminations, DC blocks, torque wrenches, test probes &
probe positioner. Special test fixtures for calibration and multicoax cable assemblies.
Frequency ranges from DC through 110 GHz. Please contact Withwave today to
see how they can help your project succeed.
 After reading the first paragraph of this
"Mac's Service Shop" technodrama entitled, "Technician
of Consulting Engineer?," I expected to be told a story about the seemingly
excited customer exiting the shop as he returned from lunch. Had the man made an
unreasonable demand on Mac McGregor, the proprietor, and was rebuffed appropriately?
It never materialized. In the second paragraph underling technician Barney mentions
having seen two men exiting the shop on his way in, not just one. At that point
I'm wondering what sort of melee had just occurred. As it turned out, my interpretation
of the event was totally incorrect. While explaining the happenings to Barney, he
imparts, as he is want to do, a couple clever bits of technical information in the
process. This appeared in the October 1960 issue of Electronics World magazine...
 Windfreak Technologies designs, manufactures,
tests and sells high value USB powered and controlled radio frequency products
such as RF signal generators, RF synthesizers, RF power detectors, mixers, up /
downconverters. Since the conception of WFT, we have introduced products that have
been purchased by a wide range of customers, from hobbyists to education facilities
to government agencies. Worldwide customers include Europe, Australia, and Asia.
Please contact Windfreak today to learn how they might help you with your current
project.
 "There was a time, decades really, when
all it took to make a better computer chip were
smaller
transistors and narrower interconnects. That time's long gone now, and although
transistors will continue to get a bit smaller, simply making them so is no longer
the point. The only way to keep up the exponential pace of computing now is a scheme
called system technology co-optimization, or STCO, argued researchers at ITF World
2023 last week in Antwerp, Belgium. It's the ability to break chips up into their
functional components, use the optimal transistor and interconnect technology for
each function, and stitch them back together to create a lower-power, better-functioning
whole. 'This leads us to a new paradigm for CMOS,' says Imec R&D manager Marie
Garcia Bardon. CMOS 2.0, as the Belgium-based nanotech research organization is
calling it, is a complicated vision. But it may be the most practical way forward..."
 If only eBay had been around at the end
of World War II, this surplus equipment would have dominated the electronics
and electromechanical gizmo categories. Electronics magazines of the post-WWII era
were filled for years with advertisements like this one from G & G
Radio Supply Company in a 1953 issue of Radio & Television News magazine.
That B-29 bomb sight, like the one used on the Enola Gay, could be purchased brand
new for a scant $295, which even in equivalent 2018 dollars of $3,3142,758 (per
the BLS), is a steal. This is not the famous Norden bombsight, but it's still a
sweet collector's item, which is available on eBay today if you would like to own
one. Already have a B-29 bombsight? How about a complete IFF (Identification Friend
or Foe)
secondary radar system? For a mere $350 you could have owned a complete rack
of RC−188−A equipment, including the rack and chassis, a 450 W power supply,
a 157-185 MHz transceiver (not in the Ham bands), a 5" CRT display, and a slew
of vacuum tubes...
 One great thing about being a member of the
ruling class of a Communist and/or Marxist dictatorship is not being held accountable
to the pesky citizens when making laws, spending, military action, social policies,
environmental actions, medical actions, etc. You simply spend whatever amount of
money deemed necessary to accomplish your desired ends - the people be damned. You
would be forgiven if you thought I was referring to modern-day America, but I'm
actually addressing China. Here from the
South China Morning Post (one of my regular sources for tech headlines) is a
story ridiculing the U.S. national debt. SCMP claims the amount of above-ground
gold equals a cube 19.2 m per side, whereas the
USGS
says 23 m per side (50% greater volume). BTW,
China's national debt
is estimated to be at $14.4T. U.S. national
debt is currently at $31.8T.
 University of Southampton, England, professor
James Holbrook suggests in this 1968 Radio-Electronics magazine article
an "easy-to-follow substitute for the left- and right-hand rules," but I'm not so
sure that the good professor's "Electron Orbit Method" is any better or easier to
remember. Admittedly, it is hard to remember whether the use a left-hand rule or
a
right-hand rule for the various physical laws - motor rotation direction, current
induction, torque, vector cross products, etc. Those involving current flow are
made even more confounding because you need to know whether the creator of the rule
refers to conventional current flow (positive-to-negative) or electron current flow
(negative-to-positive). Note in Figure 110 from the Electricity volume of Basic
Navy Training Courses how the generator rule is described as a left-hand rule with
conventional current flow. However, the modern version for electron current flow
uses a right-hand rule...
 With more than 1000
custom-built stencils, this has got to be the most comprehensive set of
Visio
Stencils available for RF, analog, and digital system and schematic drawings!
Every stencil symbol has been built to fit proportionally on the included A-, B-,
and C-size drawing page templates (or use your own page if preferred). Components
are provided for system block diagrams, conceptual drawings, schematics, test equipment,
racks (EIA 19", ETSI 21"), and more. Test equipment and racks are built at a 1:1
scale so that measurements can be made directly using Visio built-in dimensioning
objects. Page templates are provided with a preset scale (changeable) for a good
presentation that can incorporate all provided symbols...
 The leading website for the PCB industry.
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of layers supported, Types of substrates (FR-4, Rogers, flexible, rigid), Geographical
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prototype), and more. Fast turn-around on quotations for PCB fabrication and assembly.
 Little did anyone suspect when the Bell
Telephone Laboratories' "Sugar Scoop" antenna went online, as reported in this October
1960 issue of Electronics World magazine, that one of the greatest discoveries
of the astronomy world would be made with it five years later. Developed originally
to facilitate research on radio communications between the Earth and orbiting satellites,
physicists Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson measured an unexplained level of background
noise in the realm of 2.7 Kelvins that persisted regardless of where in the
sky the antenna was pointed. After ruling out the antenna and receiver as the cause,
they surmised that the noise must be coming from the cosmos itself, and that the
characteristic of it agreed with the theoretical model of the universe at an early
stage in Big Bang event. It is now known as the
Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB, CMBR)...
 You would be hard pressed to find an electronics
magazine today that included poetry as part of its typical features. I have published
pages from the ARRL's QST magazine from the 1940s that had poems. Of course,
the theme of the poems is almost always humor or parody, but poetry was not then
an unknown / unpracticed art by the general populace as it appears to be today.
Anyway, enjoy the jovial rhymes here from the August 1959 issue of Popular Electronics
magazine. Frequent comic contributor Carl Kohler provides the illustrations for
the rhymes of Saunder Harris...
 Werbel Microwave is a manufacturer of RF
directional and bidirectional couplers (6 dB to 30 dB) and RF power dividers
/ combiners (2− to 16−way) with select models operating up to 26.5 GHz and
100 W of CW power (3 kW peak). All are RoHS and REACH compliant and are
designed and manufactured in our Whippany, NJ, location. Custom products and private
label service available. Please take a couple minutes to visit their website and
see how Werbel Microwave can help you today.
 In the year 2023, it is easy to forget what
the field of personal computers looked like back in the early days of home computing
(assuming that you were even alive and a computer user then). My first PC (circa
1983) was a Sinclair ZX-80 model that had a membrane keypad, used a cassette tape
deck for storage, and connected to a television display via a video converter. My
first program beyond the obligatory "Hello World!" variety was one that plotted
a sine wave and cosine wave on the screen. From there, I moved on to a VIC-20, and
finally to my first "real" PC, an
ATT 6300
(in 1987, while at the University of Vermont, working on my BSEE). The ATT6300 came
with two, 5-1/4" floppy disk drives and no hard drive. It was a real step up when
I installed a whopping 10 MByte internal HDD, and then even added an 8087 math processor
to assist the 8086 processor. Its green monochrome monitor had a really weird resolution
that almost NO software was designed for, so it could cause display problems. UVM
required all engineering students to buy one from them, at around $3,000, as well
as an HP dot matrix printer that cost around $450...
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