Oldest piece of working and still used test equipment ?

I have an AVO transistor analyser, the data book that's with it is dated May

1960 but not sure of the actual manufacturing date. It doesn't get any use because it needs 14 U10 sized cells which are £4.90 each from The Small Battery company! I suppose I could make an adapter (well, 14 of them) to use AA cells but I just haven't got around to it. Lovely piece of kit, built like a tank and in remarkably good condition. Martin

--
martinwhybrowntlworldcom

We still use some General Radio Stuff at work. Not GenRad or followup. And I have a 20m (steel) tape ruler still in use from about 1930, does this count too? :-)

Greetings from Germany Metabastler

Hammer.

--
Adrian C

I could not find a www pic of it, so here is one

I translated the centre terminal legend of Kriechstrom-schutz to mean earth leakage protection, it is connected to battery negative.

foot/inch ruler included shiny black finish reflecting the camera Normal 90 degree centre pivot analogue meter so the only reason for the odd shaped bezel must be for styling

As far as ancient hand tools are concerned, this set of parallel jaw pliers, marked date of 1918 ,Bernards of Conneticut, number 9 on here

i use about every day

ETA Tool Co, Leicester, coil winding machine approx 1920s, later than 1912 anyway

I resucitated from totally seized up with rust from being in a leaky garden shed for decades, used once a month or so.

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

Many if not most of us here have old multimeters - Simpsons and the like.

I have an RCA WV-38A multimeter with documentation from 1963, a Simpson 270 Series 2 from the same year, and an AVO from about 1968 IIRC, it's a model 9 Mark IV, (like an 8 Mark 3 but the international model). They all work perfectly. The 270 and the AVO are pretty much accurate to within the width of the meter needle.

I use these things on a nearly daily basis.

And of course there's lots and lots of old scopes out there, many of us use them for less critical apps (monitoring for example) where high frequency performance isn't critical.

Mark Z.

Well,

I still use my ears and eyes, the most useful metering devices I've got, and they are from 1961, though I'm sure that there are some in use that are older. Some people even still use biological computer and storage devices (brains).

I've also got a late 1950's or early 1960's vintage HP 400D AC-VTVM, but I only use it a few times a year.

Regards, Tim Schwartz Bristol Electronics

The beauty of them is that as they fade out, you don't notice. :-(

I say to people "I have a photographic memory but I ran out of film about

10 years ago".

Geoff.

--
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm@mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM

No

unobtainable

and

resistor

One of the first pieces of test gear I use on first opening a piece of kit for repair is nasal.

Transistors? That's almost new equipment. I'll raise you a Boonton Megacycle meter. Tubes, cloth-insulated wire and all that.

Then an electric drill from some time in the 20's, still works just fine and being used.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Use another domain or send PM.

How about a 1948 Tektronix 511ad oscilloscope. All tubes with gold wiring. Here's a link for the ad.

snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com

search for Tektronix scope

I have a perfectly functioning Simpson 260; the date written inside the meter is 1951; it sports hand-wrapped wirewound resistors in the range switching circuitry. Still nicely calibrated, too, according to my digital meter.

I found the meter, in pieces, in a trashcan at RCA Broadcast in the late '60's when I was working there-- somebody had dropped it on the concrete floor. I took it home and repaired the case and other cracks with epoxy.

Isaac

. No

s

le

nd

tor

Where were you when I bought 40 BC-100 modules!

Well I have a General Radio Type 1432J Decade Resistor at arms length. Also a Tektronix 570 tube tracer, Hickok 539c tube tester, Weston 733 tube tester....I'm sure I have something older....than me! I might add this stuff rocks! They can try and peel it from my cold dead fingers.

TMI

We've got one of these and it's a lot older than I am:

By the way, this was probably the world's first successful attempt at building an integrated circuit, in the mid 20's. The tube has multiple sections in there along with caps and resistors. So other than the resonant circuit, the speaker and the batteries you didn't need anything else to build a radio:

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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today. No

previous

unobtainable

and

resistor

late

concrete

epoxy.

By how much do you have to de-rate Rs used in a vacuum ?

-- Diverse Devices, Southampton, England electronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

[...]

Why do you want to derate in a vacuum?

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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Vacuum lacks the cooling by rising air.

------

-- Kai-Martin Knaak tel: +49-511-762-2895 Universität Hannover, Inst. für Quantenoptik fax: +49-511-762-2211 Welfengarten 1, 30167 Hannover

GPG key:

Ah, ok, I thought he meant the resistance. Inside a tube you have to use a resistor that is temperatur-insensitive. When I peek into the 3NF it looks like they are encapsulated in glass.

Resistors are staunch parts. As a teenager I worked in a company that made specialty electric gear. One of my jobs was to braze huge brake resistor arrays for locomotives, the size of a closet. They could get red-hot and still perform their job.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

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I built a clock some years ago with the oldest components I could find. Not exactly test equipment but it does meter the time :) It is documented here:

It uses some digital 74xx ICs from around 1972, a selenium rectifier and of course nixies for display.

Sensitive Research Polyranger "Expanded Scale" Thermocouple Volt & Amp meter built some time in the '40s? and last calibrated in the '60s.

Similar to this meter:

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!