A recent discussion on SED
Posted the following link to the MIT rad. lab series.
I=92ve read none of these, and I figure it=92s time to lay in some reading material for those long winter nights that are coming shortly.
I=92ve ordered a copy of Volume 8 from the web. (I like Dicke and Purcell.) And I=92m looking for other recommendations. (Volume 15 =93Crystal rectifiers was referred to in the above SED thread.) Any other =91gems=92?
George H.
There's a lot of good ones.
I like
19 Waveforms 22 CRT Displays 5 Pulse Generators 21 Electronic Instruments 1 Radar System Engineering 6 Microwave MagnetronsThe "Crystal Rectifiers" volume is amazing in respect to how much they understood about semiconductor theory. Somewhere they mention casually that "a semiconductor triode should be possible."
John
I second John Larkin's choice of Vol 21, "Electronic Instruments".
Except for the use of vacuum tubes, much of the design principles apply today. The mechanical servo designs may be useful when electric automobiles become common!
The section on CRT oscilloscope design reminds me of the early days, (1950), when I dissected an early Techtonix CRT and bent the deflection plate closer together at their initial position. This increased the sensitivity enough to be useful. (It helped to have access to the tube lab, where the CRT was re-pumped and activated with a new cathode.)
It's an interesting read just to see how far we've come and how some things remain the same!
-- Virg Wall, P.E.
I have some (all?) in PDF form that were made available on the web back in 1998. I think I got them from here:
Just in case you don't mind PDF files instead of paper books.
You can at least preview them, this way.
Jon
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Excellent Thanks, I'll see what I can 'scare up' on the web.
George H.
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Cool, thanks for the link Jon, We just bought my mother-in-law a kindle as a thank you gift. (Two weeks of vacation in her house on Cape Cod...) And my wife was wishing we had one for ourselves. Not sure how this would work for technical stuff... where you like to flip around a lot. But for winter time reading it would be perfect.
George H.
Gorgeous. Thanks.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal ElectroOptical Innovations 55 Orchard Rd Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
George, your comment reminded me about the shift from databooks being printed and distributed to all and sundry, years ago, to today where only PDF files are provided. I've tried (I wrote to the appropriate attorney staff at Texas Instruments after days of phone calls to get there) to get permission to print these PDF files via a service like Lulu or a local print shop. But they require pristine, clear title and will refuse to print a PDF file without attending it with written permission from the copyright holder. Texas Instruments is yet to provide me with documentation that, for example, Lulu considers adequate in order to print and bind a copy for me.
The alternative I've used is a laser printer. I've even picked up a duplexing one years ago so that I didn't have to babysit the process so much, for longer documents where two-sided was the only reasonable choice.
I miss having color (no, I didn't yet buy a duplexing, color laser system) sometimes, but most of the time that's okay. In the few cases where color is important (color used on graphs to distinguish curves, for example), I have hand-labeled things on the printed copy. It's usually just a few pages, though with published scientific papers it is more of a real pain.
But I'm probably in the market for something along the lines of a thin tablet computer that is large enough that I don't need a magnifying glass to read technical documents and graphs (I can still read the writing on 0402 resistor parts without aid if the light is good) and which supports PDF files of all kinds and versions (I really, really do not want to go begging to huge semiconductor companies to redo their PDF files just so I can read them on some reader that only supports certain subtypes of PDF files.) Color would be a nice-to- have feature, but not strictly necessary. USB is fine to transfer files, I don't need 3G technology.
Given where things are at, right now, it seems perhaps the netbook is the closest thing I can get on this score. The kindle seems a bit too small in the display to me, though I don't have any experience with it so maybe I'm wrong. Sony seems brand new in the market and some of Sony's are just announcements, not really existing for purchase. A larger display would also be really nice for presentations to share over lunch with someone else (such as a state or national legislator) nice -- notebooks are just too clumsy right now. But besides that need, when I'm working somewhere else other than at a computer I'd like to be able to 'carry' some books with me. And be able to read them comfortably.
Thinks seem close enough that I can taste it, but far enough yet that it seems I must wait and just keep on printing for a while, yet.
Thoughts?
Jon
...
ading
y .Hi Jon, I wanted to thank you again for the link to the rad lab series. I downloaded a couple of these and they are all on the order of 700 pages each! I've now got reading that will last me for years.
I really don't know too much about the kindle. (The Sony is not due for release till Septemeber??) We purchased the newer larger size kindle and amazon claims that this version can read pdf files without having to put them into some other format. It also has a larger size, and a larger price tag! $500.00. But I haven't seen it. We had it shipped direct to Cape Cod. I hopefully will get a look at it around Xmas time. I really like the idea of being able to read pdf files. After all there is the Gutenberg project!
George H.
hehe. Yes. Volume 27 (I think) has something interesting on mechanical means to do integration, multiplication, and so on. I can imagine some of these inside the old KSR35 terminals and certainly in the old mechanical calculators (I used one of those that supported multiplication back in the mid 1960's; I cranked a handle to power the machinery, of course.) Much (that included) is a bit dated.
Reading PDF is a requirement for me. It needs to be easy, too, and not depending on some "service" they offer.
I've certainly used that! In fact, I also suggested to the late Dr. Stillman Drake's wife that she consider placing his books (those translating Galileo's work) at their disposal. Hasn't happened, though. But it may.
Jon
They are still available there. You can get an index, (Vol 28), to them all: (6.8M PDF)
I have eight of the original volumes, but never got the complete index, (Vol 28).
I started my engineering career, (1949), using instruments derived from this technology, or built by myself from it.
-- Virg Wall, P.E.
I downloaded all of it: 793,587,848 bytes including the web page.
-- You can\'t have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!
V1, fig 1.3, is very cool.
John
Doesn't come out well in the scan, unfortunately.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal ElectroOptical Innovations 55 Orchard Rd Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
I suppose, when you think about it, the moon is still a big chunk of the sky, so bouncing a radar pulse off it isn't all that difficult. Still, it's impressive that they did that ca 1942, with point-contact diode mixers feeding tube IF amplifiers.
Reading the index volume of the RadLab books is amazing... the birth of modern electronics.
John
ftp://jjlarkin.lmi.net/MoonBounce.JPG
John
ir/MITSeries.html
gI have picked up a couple of volumes at swap meets and garage sales. I am always looking for more in used book stores. At one time, I saw an entire set, practically unopened as far as I could tell, in a reference bookshelf of a US Navy electronics school.
I also look for older versions of Bowditch's Navigator, which is used as a text at Annapolis, and which gets updates every few years to keep up with the newer equipment. And I stumbled into a complete set of the US Army's official history of WWII. Unfortunately, it was in Lawton, OK, so I only bought one volume to take home in my luggage.
SED
series.http://www.jlab.org/ir/MITSeries.html
shows 82 hits for the series.
-- You can\'t have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!
SED
series.http://www.jlab.org/ir/MITSeries.html
You can still buy entire RadLab sets, ballpark $3000 for one in prime condition. I have them all, collected over the years, but a motley collection of conditions and a few of the smaller, grey-cover versions. Fascinating anyhow. I read them all when I was a summer worker at LSUNO (microwave spectroscopy, 80 cents an hour) where they had the whole set in the library.
I went to a couple of used-book stores in Cambridge, a 5 minute walk from the original RadLab, and they'd never heard of it. Try Amazon or ebay.
Morison's official history of the US Navy in WWII can be had in prime condition, 15 vols, affordable. A good, long read.
John
Cute, thanks. I'm sort of surprised that the echo is that wide--it ought to be dying off in less than 10 ms, compared with a total delay of
2.5 seconds.Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal ElectroOptical Innovations 55 Orchard Rd Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
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