Hi all, I can remember in high school seeing articles about fluidics. You could machine a thin piece of metal or plastic and make a flip flop out of it. You could make a whole slew of flip flops in less volume than a drafting eraser. Obviously, with this level of miniaturization, the future of electronics was limited. You could buy a Nuvistor that was only a little bigger than a transistor. Yes, you could still get the good old Raytheon CK-722 transistor. Never could get one of them to work. Selenium diodes were everywhere, silicon diodes could be had if you could afford them and didn't want very high PIV's. Electrolytic capacitors leaked...physically not necessarily electrically. Tunnel diodes were written about in Scientific American. Time was being kept on battery-powered transistor-driven tuning forks otherwise known as Bulova Accutrons. You could still buy "B" batteries, 90 to 125 volts, for "portable" radios. Vibrators, not what you think, were still around as replacement parts to switch the 6 volt auto electric circuits through a transformer to generate the B+. A key troubleshooting tool was available from RCA. It looked like a wooden pencil with two large erasers at right angles to the pencil, a little like a two headed hammer. It was used to tap on tubes and see which ones sparked, or flashed or otherwise failed. This test was the second or third thing you tried in troubleshooting...never fourth! Portable meters were invariably volt-ohm-meters. Cheap ones were 1000 ohms per volt, expensive ones were 20000. Vacuum Tube Volt Meters (VTVM's) were as accurate as anyone needed and they had an input resistance of 11 M ohms. The calculator you used was often referred to as a "sly drool", "slipstick", or even an analog computer. Heathkit sold an analog computer for around $700, mostly to schools. By the way, I'm 52. Born the same year as the transistor, and the first oil well drilled by the US in Iran. And somehow, I feel like I'm just a baby. I used to have a collection of QST magazines going back to the 1940's. As a young kid, I remember days before television. We seemed to have a lot more time then. But then I digress from my previous digressions. Dave dporter@voicenet.com ---------- > From: Regulus Berdin > To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU > Subject: Re: OT: getting on > Date: Monday, January 25, 1999 12:42 AM > > Hi all, > > I am wondering! What is the average age of piclist subscribers? > I usually hear stories about the 70s, which unfortunately I was still a > baby. > > BTW, I am still 26 :). > > regards, > Reggie >