I decided to break into my 1000V DC, 10 Gigohm insulation tester, today. Noparticular reason , just curious, as still in perfect working order.Had to break a seal to get inside, never needed repair by me or previousowners, just my adapting to 9V nicad use rather than pair of unobtainable4.5V batteries.Made in Austria , Norma Isolationmesser 667 001Date inside is 15 December 1965, i thought it would be 1970sJust disintegrated foam inside, compenentry like Siemens AD130, AC153 andOC75 all fine. Whenever I check calibration with a 1G glass cased resistorit is the same cal setting, no switch problems or anything else.--Diverse Devices, Southampton, Englandelectronic hints and repair briefs , schematics/manuals list on

[...]Not sure of the exact date, but my Solartron CO 546 Audio Sig. Gen. isprobably 10 years older than that - and is still used several times aweek. It was rescued from a skip in the 1980s. I cleaned it up andreplaced the valves as a precautionary measure and have recently had toreplace one electrolytic capacitor. Also I use a BBC audio oscillator TS/10/404 and a pair of PPM/MeasuringSets on a daily basis. All of those appear to date from the late 1950sor early 1960s. They have not been quite as trouble-free as theSolartron, but most of the problems have been caused by dirty contactson the attenuators and pre-set pots. In the 20 years I have ownedthem, they have needed one replacement valve between the whole lot.I don't know if you would count 316 plugs and jack strips, but some ofmine are pre-war.-- ~ Adrian Tuddenham ~(Remove the ".invalid"s and add "" to reply)

I built a clock some years ago with the oldest components I couldfind. 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 rectifierand of course nixies for display.

Oldest piece of working and still used test equipment ?

Sep 16, 2009 22 Replies

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Jeroni Paul 16 years ago

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:

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

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Michael A. Terrell 16 years ago

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!

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Ansgar Strickerschmidt 16 years ago

Am 22.09.2009, 16:59 Uhr, schrieb Joerg :

Well, ultimate accuracy is surely not an issue when talking of dissipating energy on a locomotive... allow for some 10-20% (or so) change in resistance value with temperature - who cares...

Ansgar

*** Musik! ***

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