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Saving History From The Dumpster

These pages are dedicated to preserving a historical record of broadcast equipment. Others are doing an excellent job in recording other aspects of the history of broadcasting. As we find them, we'll add links to them. This site consists of scanned manuals and catalogs of broadcast equipment. In October 2005, the site was changed from hand coded HTML to a wiki. In June 2014, this was migrated to a new server and an updated wiki code set. Because of severe issues with wiki spam, only registered users can edit the pages. If you have a scan you'd like posted, please mail it to me, and I'll post it.

Broadcast Equipment

Historic Papers - Papers by the people who made broadcasting possible. A collection of papers on technology. Quite a few early papers on AM, FM, and TV.

Photo Gallery - Contributed photos of historic equipment and installations.

Station Histories - Contributed station histories and links to others.

Other Manual Archives

  • Audio Sharing - An archive of audio equipment manuals including some used in broadcast and film.
  • Australian Professional Audio Equipment - Originally the purpose of this page is to document professional audio recording devices manufactured in Australia. The main focus is on professional reel to reel magnetic tape recorders but other recording devices such as tape cartridge machines, magnetic drum recorders, disc cutting and replay equipment are also covered. The collection inclues equipment, manuals, advertising material and accessories including mic preamps, line amps, mixers, power amps, limiters, volume indicators, program failure alarms, etc. The two criteria for inclusion are that the equipment was made in Australia and that it was used in the recording or broadcasting industry or was used in a commercial setting such as a lift announcement unit.
  • BAMA - Boat Anchor Manual Archive
  • BAMA Mirror
  • BAMA List of Other Sites with free manuals
  • AA4DF manuals for sale with some free. Manuals for consumer, broadcast, communications, and test equipment.
  • AC6V List of ham radio manual suppliers
  • Broadcast Documents - collection of manual photocopies for sale
  • http://www.coutant.org/ - Extensive microphone archive and several other pieces of equipment.
  • DIY Audio Technical Books Online. Extensive collection of tube manuals and books on design and troubleshooting.
  • Electron Ballet - Computer and test equipment manuals and more.
  • Just Manuals - Fairly extensive paid manual archive.
  • Nostalgia Air - Antique and vintage radio info
  • Purple Audio Schematic Library - Schematics and manuals for Altec, Ampex, CBS Labs, Datamix, Gates, Langevin, Pultec, RCA, Spectra Sonics, Sony, Telefunken, 3M, UREI
  • eService Info - Service manuals for computers, test equipment, consumer equipment in rar format
  • http://www.ebaman.com/ - Various contributed manuals for electronics, computers, home electronics, motors, etc.
  • Liberated Manuals - Extensive collection of military manuals.
  • PDF Manuals - Tektronix test equipment manuals for sale.
  • Radio Era - Over 150,000 original factory instruction and service manuals from 1915 - 1985
  • Radio Gear Guide - Links to manufacturer provided manual pages.
  • Radio Papers - Manuals and papers from broadcast equipment manufacturers and consultants.
  • Rider's Perpetual Troubleshooters - Receiver schematics and service info for 1920s through 1954.
  • SafeManuals - Consumer product manuals.
  • A. G. Tannenbaum - Manuals for sale
  • Technician's File Cabinet - Attempt to bring together in one place links to service and technical information for electronic equipment. Includes sections for consumer audio, pro audio, old radios, ham radio, test equipment, military electronics, and transformers.
  • Telephony Document Archive - Extensive telephone system documentation collected by Steve Cichorsky.
  • Teletype Manuals and other info related to Teletype teleprinters.
  • Transcom Corporation has manuals for sale. Manuals include transmitters and exciters
  • Northland Radio has quite a few manuals with copies available for sale and a few free for download
  • Vintage Manuals - over 16,000 vintage radio, audio and test equipment manuals.
  • Waltzing Bear Schematic Archive - Schematics and data for AKG, Altec, Ampex, API, CBS, Dolby, Gates, Jensen, MCI, Neve, Orban, Otari, Pacific Recorders and Engineering, Quad Eight, RCA, Sennheiser, Shure, SpectraSonics, Spectrum, SSL, Studer, Telefunken, Trident, Urei, UTC, Valley, Western Electric, and others.

Other Broadcast History Sites

  • American Radio History - Extensive archive of broadcast publications, including Broadcasting Magazine, Broadcasting Yearbook, Radio Daily, RCA Broadcast News, and more.

  • http://antiqueradios.com/resources/

  • Audio Processing History

  • http://www.amfone.net - Restore and put that old broadcast transmitter to work as an amateur radio transmitter!
  • http://www.broadcastpioneers.com of Philadelphia - invaluable...a trove of early TV memories for Delaware Valley nostalgiaholics.
  • David Gleason has a very nice collection of Broadcasting Magazines (1935-1949) and Broadcasting Yearbook (1944-1979).
  • Early Radio History - Thomas H. White's very extensive site covering 1897 through 1927
  • California Historical Radio Society exchanges ideas and information on the history of radio, particularly in the West, with emphasis in collecting, literature, programs, and the restoration and display of early equipment.
  • Chalk Hill Educational Media has a nice collection of historic radio and television info.
  • http://www.coutant.org/ LOTS of information on LOTS of microphones. Also, some manuals on old broadcast equipment.
  • Drake Chenault
  • Donna Halper's History of Broadcasting Links - includes The Story of Jewish Comedians in America, The Short Course by Donna Halper, Donna Halper and The Rush Discovery Story, Halper's History of Radio - Old Time Radio, African Americans and Early Radio by Donna Halper, Milestones of the Radio Age, Radio in 1939 - Halper's History of Radio - Old Time Radio, Broadcasting History Articles by Elizabeth McLeod, John Sheppard III, Some History by Donna Halper, A Radio First in Vinton Iowa by Donna Halper, Rembering the Ladies, A Salute to the Women of Early Radio.
  • Early Radio - Extensive collection of documents at http://www.durenberger.com/ .
  • Edwin Howard Armstrong - FM Inventor - History at Columbia University.
  • Armmstrong Archive Blog - Columbia University is catalogging Armstrong's papers. Ideally they'll scan them andmake them available. Meanwhile, tidbits are available here.
  • FCC Audio Division Collected Engineering Documents contains an extensive collection of documents showing the history of radio broadcasting. These include documents on early AM and FM broadcasting, and the Radio Service Bulletins from 1915.
  • FCC Radio Pioneers - The Ideas that Made Radio Possible, The Power that Made Radio Realistic, The Quality that Made Radio Popular
  • FM Broadcasting Chronology - This page shows some of the events in the early history of FM broadcasting in the United States. Note that apex stations referred to on this page used amplitude modulation on VHF frequencies; many of them evolved into FM stations. For dates involving the earliest stations, see also the "earliest FM stations" page at this website.
  • Gates Harris History - Great archive of Gates newsletters back to 1935
  • Bob Groome SOB Site - Extensive schematic and photo collection.
  • History of American Broadcasting by Jeff Miller. Many articles and an extensive list of links to other broadcast history sites.
  • Bob Mayben has a nice collection of photographs of older equipment, much of it restored to like new condition.
  • Modesto Radio Museum - The Modesto Radio Museum foundation was formed in 2004 comprised of current and past men and women with local broadcasting experience. The original idea for the museum came in 2004, when Harry Pappas, owner of the original KTRB property on Norwegian Ave in Modesto, contacted Wes Page, Cecil Lynch and Cal Purviance with the idea to build a museum dedicated to preserving the history of commercial broadcasting in Modesto, and the area, beginning in 1933 when KTRB signed on the air in Modesto. The goal was to increase and preserve the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of their efforts and the equipment they used. Due to economic conditions, the museum is currently on the web only.
  • oldradio.com - Oldradio.com's mission is to find and share information about the pioneer broadcast radio stations and current industry issues, as well as links and references to other locations containing accurate materials on broadcasting. The emphasis is on professional broadcasting, but we can "wander" a bit from time to time. The goal is to shed light on your questions, and clear up some myths.
  • On The Air - 1937 film describing how radio works.
  • http://hawkins.pair.com/radio.html - Jim Hawkins Radio and Broadcast Technology Page. Photo tours and histories of many statons.
  • Radio Lovers - audio archives of old radio programming.
  • Old Time Radio Catalog - EXTENSIVE catalog of old radio broadcast recordings for sale.
  • http://www.marconicalling.com/ - The Guglielmo Marconi archive including MANY historic documents, such as his early patents, Titanic communications, and MUCH more!

  • http://www.radioclubofamerica.org

  • http://www.radioheritage.net - We're sharing the stories of Pacific radio. More than anywhere else in the world, radio found an easy home here, conquering vast distances of ocean, and connecting the scattered islands with each other in much the same way early Polynesian seafarers used the sea itself as their main means of communication.
  • UK Radio and TV Transmitters
  • IEEE Oral History Site - Interviews with those involved in the development of radio, television, radar, the internet, etc.
  • The EBS Accident - In 1971, the wire services carried an Emergency Action Notification requiring normal broadcasting to cease immediately...
  • GGN Information - Early commercial FM and Television broadcasting facilities from mid 1930s to late 1970s. Concentrates on New Hampshire, major stations in New England and the Northeast, as well as other selected early broadcasters.
  • Radio Links - LOTS of links to broadcast oriented sites. The history page links to several dozen broadcast history sites.
  • Reel Radio Top 40 Radio Repository air check collection.
  • The Roots of Radio run deep in Philadelphia - Tells the evoloution of several broadcast manufacturers, including RCA, GE, CCA, ITA, Ampex, Comark, Belar, AEL, QEI, CSI, LPB, Wilkinson, ATI, Dielectric, Ampro,
  • John Schneider's San Francisco Radio History - Very nice collection of station histories.
  • Snugglebunny page by Alan & Sharon Kline. Includes radio magazines from the 1920s forward, links to camera tube datasheets, links to historic broadcast patents, etc.
  • Video Park Restoration of Old Broadcast Equipment - Photographs of very nicely restored broadcast equipment
  • Western Historic Radio Museum - Vintage Radio Equipment and Memorabilia, 1910 through the 1950s, Virginia City, Nevada
  • Vintage Broadcast Microphones - Private collection of early broadcast microphones, related documentation and collector/historian resources.

  • Video - Found video about radio

    • NBC Presents “Behind Your Radio Dial” (1940) - Describes various aspects of electronics including broadcast radio and television, manufacturing, receiver repair, public address, and maritime communications. Concentrates on the training required and job opportunities.
    • How Radio Broadcasting Works (1937) - Describes a bit of the technology involved in getting sound from the studio to your radio. One interesting image is how amplification works. They show the image of a waveform, then show it amplified. But, the amplified waveform appears to be just an enlarged image of the original, in both the X and Y axis. So, the amplification appears to make the amplitude larger and the frequency lower.

Television

  • Antique Television - a brief page, but has several links that look good.
  • The Old CATV Equipment Museum - A place to post photos of ancient cable TV equipment, with appropriate captions.
  • Cartrivision - The first consumer videocasette machine in 1972.
  • Chalk Hill Educational Media has a nice collection of historic radio and television info.
  • DuMont Television Network - In the late 1940's and early 1950's, DuMont was America's fourth television network.
  • Early Television Foundation & Museum in Ohio. Site has nice images of televisions back to 1928. Has images from a Baird mechanical receiver. Lotsa stuff!
  • Farnovision - Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television
  • FCC Television History pages.
  • History of UHF Television - Excellent collection of artifacts from Histor's Dumpster
  • Jonz Valve Page - Extensive photo galleries and restoration info for old radios and televisions.
  • LabGuy's World - EXTENSIVE collection of consumer video tape recorders with excellent links to other video sites.
  • Narrow Band Television Association - Early television, especially mechanically scanned.
  • North Beach Media has a nice collection of photos of vintage television equipment. Scroll down the page to the photo gallery, then select a "vintage" area in the drop down menu.
  • NTSC-TV has extensive technical information on the US analog television transmission system and its development.
  • Old Boys The 'Oldboys' web site began in 1998 which was the 40th 'birthday' of videotape in the BBC, and so it seemed appropriate to commemorate this with a small collection of pictures from the various decades. Since then it has expanded somewhat to over 1500 pages and 2400 pictures and, in November 2008, we celebrated our tenth birthday.
  • Quadruplex Park - Quadruplex park is the home page for those who are interested in collecting electronic equipment used in broadcasting. It is especially for those who collect the more obscure, unusual, and sometimes just plain hard-to-deal-with things, such as large format VTR's, film chains, switchers, studio cameras, terminal equipment, and even transmitters.
  • Ed Reitan's Color Television History
  • Television Tape - Discover the magic of television production on tape, as compared to film.
  • historytv.net - Early television images, including 1929 broadcast of Felix the Cat
  • Tech Notes history and biography. Television oriented including history of translators, TV channel 1, studio equipment, telecine, satellite, video recording, cable television, etc. Biographies include Klaus Landsberg, Harry Lubcke, John Logie Baird, Vladimir Kosma Zworykin, Paul Gottlieb Nipkow, Fondazione Guglielmo Marconi, and Charles Hallinan.
  • tvhistory.tv - The first 75 years of TV
  • Chuck Pharis Video - Chuck has an excellent collection of vintage television broadcast equipment... and radio too!
  • Videotape Systems Theory - Has a nice history and photographs of the development of videotape.
  • W3XK -- America's first television station - A scrapbook of postcards, letters, and QSL cards collected by station owner, Charles Francis Jenkins.

Cinema

Marine Radio

  • American Marconi - The American Marconi Foundation is a non-profit education and research organization dedicated to the continuation of the work of Nikola Tesla, Oliver Heaviside, Proteus Steinmetz, Ernst Alexanderson and all the others that contributed to the advancement of electrical engineering. In particular, the study of electrical engineering with regards to the development of the New Brunswick and Bolinas radio frequency electrical substations and future technologies latent in their design.

  • Marine Radio Historical Society - Radiotelegraph ship to shore
  • http://www.marconicalling.com/ - The Guglielmo Marconi archive including MANY historic documents, such as his early patents, Titanic communications, and MUCH more!
  • Titanic Radio Page - Very nice site including photos and a transcript of Titanic's distress communications.

MilitaryRadio - Descriptions of military radio equipment and networks.

Police Radio

Recording (audio, video, etc.)

  • Ampex Virtual Museum - Dedicated to preserving the history of the most important manufacturer of magnetic recorders, the Ampex Virtual Museum provides online access to Manuals, Schematics, and Service Bulletins; Repair, Maintenance, and Modification Tips; Parts and Repair Sources; Catalogs, Sales Brochures, and Similar Literature; Pictures of Ampexes (mostly); Biographies of some Ampex Mailing List subscribers; Pictures of Ampex Mailing List parties; Ampex history & Other Historical Information; Audio Clips of Interviews with Former Ampex Employees; Alignment Instructions; Links of Interest to Ampex Users; Obituaries; Illustrations Accompanying Dale Manquen's Posts on Flutter; Literature Scanning Project
  • Audio Engineering Society History Commitee - The AES Historical Committee is an international forum open to all who wish to investigate and learn about the achievements of those pioneers whose innovative ideas and inventions have contributed to audio's rich past. Dedicated to the preservation of over a century of audio history, the Committee is developing a broad-based history of audio engineering and the audio industry. AES membership is encouraged but not required.
  • Audio Engineering Society Oral History Project - Oral history DVDs available for sale.
  • Capacitance Electronic Discs (RCA Selctavision). A play only videodisc system that used grooved discs (like phonograph records). However, instead of varying the depth and horizontal position of the groove, a conductive underlayer varied in height under the groove. The varying distance between the stylus and the conductive underlayer varied the capacity between the stylus and the underlayer. This is similar to a very high frequency capacitor (condensor) microphone.
  • History of Tape Recording - Starts with Mullin's discovery of the German Magnetophones, the Ampex audio machines, the development of videotape, and audio tape cartridges.
  • LabGuy's World - EXTENSIVE collection of consumer video tape recorders with excellent links to other video sites.
  • Old Boys - The 'Oldboys' web site began in 1998 which was the 40th 'birthday' of videotape in the BBC, and so it seemed appropriate to commemorate this with a small collection of pictures from the various decades. Since then it has expanded somewhat to over 1500 pages and 2400 pictures and, in November 2008, we celebrated our tenth birthday.
  • Phantom Productions Vintage Reel Tape Recorder Online Museum - In collecting our vintage recorders, we have attempted to include pieces that had a significant role in the development of audio recording. Our focus is primarily on those reel to reel tape recorders that enabled musicians to hone their craft. We felt it would be interesting to include some of the early cylinder, disk and wire units, however, our main collection reflects the recorders that first became available to musicians and "prosumers" in the '50's, '60's, '70's and early '80's. So many innovations assisted the musician to capture that unique sound. They included, "sound with, and on sound," echo, and then came multi-tracking. Essential to the recordings were the microphones and mixer, so we've added some of those pieces as well. For perspective, we added reel to reel pages in radio catalogs from the late '30's to the early '80's and included tape recorder ads as well. We hope you enjoy our online information. Take a look at our "Phantom Time Line" page also. You'll see some of the audio and video units that were interesting benchmarks of production development. It continues to evolve as we have time. Enjoy!
  • Recording Technology History - Great site hosted by UC San Diego. Traces sound and video recording from tin foil cylinders, plastic disks, magnetic recording, and optical recording. Has info about Webster Chicago. I have one of their wire recorders. Also mentions Harold Lindsay of Ampex. Mr. Lindsay installed the stereo in my parents' home. hh
  • RCA 45 RPM Record Changer
  • Sound and the Story - 1956 video by RCA showing how a phonograph record is produced, from recording to tape, cutting the disk, creation of molds and stampers, pressing, packaging, and shipping.
  • Vintage Cassette - The independent cassette deck resource With over 2000 vintage single cassette decks of all brands from the 1970's until now.

Telephone and Telegraph History

Receiver History

  • Jonz Valve Page - Extensive photo galleries and restoration info for old radios and televisions.
  • My Vintage TV - A tour of home entertainment equipment from 1895 to 1955
  • National - Communications receivers and early television receivers
  • Philco Radio - History, photos, schematics of stuff from the Philadelphia Storage Battery Company.
  • Regency TR-1 - The first transistor radio! Site includes video of the assembly line building these radios in 1955.
  • transistor.org - Sarah Lowrey's great collection of transistor radios, with photos, articles, restoration procedures, etc.
  • All American Five - The popular five tube radio

Computers, Calculators, Digital Electronics History

  • Antique Computers - An extensive collection of photos and documents on computer history by Ed Thelen.
  • Apollo Guidance Computer - Instructions on building your own Apollo Guidance Computer used in the moon landing of 1969. The Apollo AGC itself is a piece of computing history, it was developed by the MIT Instrumentation Laboratory and it was a quite amazing piece of hardware in the 1960s. It was the first computer to use integrated circuits (ICs), running at 1 Mhz it offered four 16-bit registers, 4K words of RAM and 32K words of ROM. The AGC mutlitasking operating system was called the EXEC, it was capable of executing up to 8 jobs at a time. The user interface unit was called the DSKY (display/keyboard, pronounced "disky"); an array of numerals and a calculator-style keyboard used by the astronauts to communicate with the computer.
  • Bell Systems Technical Journal 1922-1983. Includes the invention of the transistor, Shannon's Law of information, invention of CCD, etc.
  • BitSavers - Saving computer history from the dumpster! They have more than 830,000 pages of scanned computer documents in their archive. Also, links to other historic computer sites.
  • Catweasel is an interesting product that lets you use standard PC drives to read old floppies (all PC-formats (180K up to 1440K), Amiga DD and HD (also 5,25" formats), Atari 9, 10 and 11 sektor disks, Macintosh 720K, 800K, 1440K (DD, GCR, HD), Commodore 1541, 1571, 1581 (C64, C128 and 3,5" C-64 disks), XTRA High density with 2380KByte per disk, Nintendo backup station 1600KB format, Atari 800XL (all MFM formats, FM under developement), Apple IIe disks (Apple DOS 3.3 and up)
  • Computer Conservation Society - Conserving the UK computer heritage.
  • http://www.computer-history.info/ - Stories of the Development of Large Scale Scientific Computing at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  • Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA - preserves and presents for posterity the artifacts and stories of the information age. As such, the Museum plays a unique role in the history of the computing revolution and its worldwide impact on the human experience.
  • Eckert Tapes - Transcript of interview with J. Presper Eckert, one of the developers of the ENIAC, the first all electronic digital computer (with 18,000 vacuum tubes). Computerworld, February 20, 2006
  • CPU Shack - CPU History Museum for Intel CPUs, AMD Processor, Cyrix Microprocessors, Microcontrollers and more.
  • Report on the Eniac, developed under the supervision of the Ordnance Department, United States Army. June 1, 1946. Detailed description of the ENIAC.
  • fourmilab.ch - Univac history, Babbage Analytical Engine, and a history of AutoCAD
  • Historic Computer Images by Mike Muuss. Many are US Army photos.
  • History of Computing Information - Information about the history of computing, assembled by Mike Muuss for your information and edification. Documents from the home of the ENIAC -- The U. S. Army Research Lab .
  • HP Museum - Calculators!
  • History of Computing Information - Information about the history of computing, assembled by Mike Muuss for your information and edification. Documents from the home of the ENIAC -- The U. S. Army Research Lab .
  • A Brief History of the Hard Drive - Nice photo collection starting with the IBM RAMAC drive of 1956, which held 5MB.
  • http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/nsf-net/home.jsp - History of Internet at NSF
  • Kelley Ad shows and describes the early advertising for Apple
  • LED Watches
  • Mouse Site - A history of the mouse and human/machine interface. Excellent info at Stanford University.
  • National Security Agency Center for Cryptographic History - History of cryptography as used by the NSA. See, especially Historical Publications for documents showing the history of cryptography from pre-WW1 through the Viet Nam war.
  • National Museum of Computing is dedicated to showing the development of computing in its broadest sense from the pioneering war time efforts that resulted in Colossus, to the products and systems we use today. The museum is part of the whole Bletchley Park experience, and all visitors to the park can visit the museum free of charge when it is open. The museum houses the Colossus computer, an exhibition of the most complex code cracking activities performed at the Park, and enhances the Park visitors' experience by continuing the history of the development of computing from the 1940s to the present day.
  • Online Timeline - A capsule history of online news and information systems by David Carlson. In particular, this history of The Source is interesting since I (HH) used this before I had a computer. I built a 300bps modem and connected to The Source with a Lear Siegler ADM-1 terminal. They had an MC6800 cross assembler on the system I used to develop my first microprocessor based product.
  • Old Computers . com - The name says it all... Remember the Altair? The PET, the VIC-20? The PDP-8?

  • Radio Shack

    • Ira Goldklang's TRC-80 Revival|http://www.trs-80.com/] - This site is devoted to providing extensive information on the line of TRS-80 personal home computers, with a specific focus on the Model I, Model III, and Model 4. There is also SOME information on the Model 100/102, Model 200, Model 600, Color Computer, and Pocket Computer lines as well as Printers. Information from these links includes product descriptions, catalog numbers, pictures, prices, operations, hardware, software, etc.
    • TRS-80.org - Extensive history with several interviews.
    • Jeff Vavasour's TRS-80 EMULATION Page - Emulate various Radio Shack computers
  • Relay Computer - While not strictly historic, it's interesting nonetheless. A computer made with relays (used as gates, flip flops, ALU, etc.).
  • Signetics Write Only Memory
  • Southwest Technical Products early supplier of audio and computer kits.
  • Trailing Edge - Archive of software for old DEC machines. Also, the Computer History Simulation Project which simulates the Data General Nova, Eclipse, Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-1, PDP-4, PDP-7, PDP-8, PDP-9, PDP-10, PDP-11, PDP-15, VAX, GRI Corporation GRI-909, IBM 1401, 1620, 1130, System 3, Interdata (Perkin-Elmer) 16b and 32b systems, Hewlett-Packard 2116, 2100, 21MX, Honeywell H316/H516, MITS Altair 8800, with both 8080 and Z80, Royal-Mcbee LGP-30, LGP-21, Scientific Data Systems SDS 940
  • Vintage Calculators . com - A celebration of old calculators showing the evolution from mechanical calculator to pocket electronic calculator.
  • Unix Haters Handbook

Data Communications

Other Historic Sites

  • Heathkit - Revists the Heathkit age which began in the late 1940's and lasted through the early 1990's.
  • Bell Systems Technical Journal 1922-1983. Includes the invention of the transistor, Shannon's Law of information, invention of CCD, etc.
  • Bill's Retro World - Nice collection of photos from old television programs, advertisements, and general photos from the 1950s and 1960s.
  • Carl and Jerry- The Carl and Jerry stories from Popular Electronics, October 1954 through December 1964
  • Classic Tek - WONDERFUL site full of manuals, photos, video, and other info on Tektronix.
  • Derek's Virtual Slide Rule Gallery - Real nice simulations of slide rules!
  • Einstein Papers Project - The collected papers of Albert Einstein.
  • Hearing Aid Museum - From ear trumpets to carbon microphones to vacuum tubes, to transistors, to digital signal processors. Hearing aids have changed over the years.
  • Mark Cselle's History of Technology Page - Extensive information on history of power generation, telephone, computers, vacuum tubes, etc..
  • Mike's Electric Stuff has a nice collection of info on vaccum tubes, Nixies, and more.
  • The Oughtred Society - The Oughtred Society was founded in 1991 by a group of slide rule collectors and is dedicated to the preservation and history of slide rules and other calculating instruments. In the past fourteen years it has evolved to an international organization with members in 22 countries. It is noted for its highly acclaimed Journal of the Oughtred Society,
  • Philbrick Archive - This site is a free non-profit repository of materials from GAP/R George A Philbrick Researches, the company that launched the commercial use of the Operational Amplifier in 1952.
  • Radio Shack Catalogs - Excellent collection of Radio Shack print catalogs from the first 1939 catalog through 2003.
  • Semiconductor Museum - Great collection of photographs and oral histories of the developments of semiconductors. For example, an oral history describes the development of the 2N2222, which was released in 1962 and is still being designed into products today.

  • Telharmonium - The Telharmonium (also known as the Dynamophone) was an early electronic musical instrument, developed by Thaddeus Cahill in 1897. The Telharmonium was intended to be listened to using telephone receivers.

  • Tesla Wardenclyffe Project - mission is the preservation and adaptive reuse of Wardenclyffe, the century-old laboratory of electrical pioneer Nikola Tesla located in Shoreham, Long Island, New York.
  • http://www.pat2pdf.org/ - Free online conversions of USPTO patent images to pdf for easy viewing. Just supply the patent number.
  • Watthourmeters.com - An online reference to US made watthour meters.
  • Weston Engineering Notes - "Weston Electrical Instrument Corporation, founded in 1888, is responsible for many important developments in the electrical engineering field. Several years ago, I came across a 3 year collection of Weston Engineering Notes starting in 1946. This was a far different time and many of the things we take for granted today weren't even dreams of the future yet. Clicking the above logo will give you an enlarged sketch of an engineer's desk. Engineering and physics books (complete with log tables) close at hand. The ever present slide rule, a sharp pencil, drafting triangle and the all-important eraser being important tools of the trade. A tube and a large can capacitor are part of a current project. An analog meter waiting to prove or dis-prove the latest theory. The pipe to be used while pondering the latest developments and speculating about the future."



NOTE - Some files are more than 100MB and may fail an HTTP download. If you find a file fails, let me know (harold@hallikainen.org), and I'll set up an FTP link to the file. It may be slow, but it will work!

Contribute
NOTE - Due to wiki spam, only registered users can edit pages. If you have a scan of a manual that you'd like posted, please email it to me.

Scanned contributions are most appreciated! Ideally, they should be PDF files using 300dpi. Use an appropriate bit depth for each page. If a page is just text or line art, use 1 bit per pixel. For black and white photography, use 8 bits per pixel. For spot color, try to use 8 bits per pixel. For full color, use 24 bits per pixel. Very large files (more than 50M) should be broken into sections (pages 1 through something in one file, more pages in another file, etc.). Finally, try running "Paper Capture" on the files with the OCR text "in the background." Use File - Preferences - Paper Capture - Original Image With Hidden Text. The user sees the scanned image. The OCR text is available to copy and paste and to search engines.

If you did not scan the material yourself, please obtain permission and credit the person who did. If you find appropriate information on another website, it'd be best to link to that site instead of copying material from it (especially without permission).

About Copyright Some of the material on this site may still be under copyright. Use of material here is intended to be fair use allowing researchers to study the history and evolution of broadcast equipment. If, however, you hold the copyright on material on this site and you would like the material removed, please let me know. The material will be removed immediately.

Thanks!

Harold Hallikainen
harold@hallikainen.com