>Of course, this was back in the days when 4MHz was 'fast' for
>a system clock speed, and the FCC regulations on unintentional
>emitters were in their infancy or earlier, so you weren't
>expected to run into too many "real world" issues with "wire"
>unless you were building radio-like things.

A friend of my fathers used to tell how he got roped in to sort out peoples 
home project valve amplifiers. One he mentioned would have one output tube 
have the anode glowing a dull red, and over a few seconds that one would 
fade, and the other tube of the push-pull pair would increase in colour. 
Moving the grid stopper resistors from the tag board to the valve sockets, 
with very short wires cured that one.

The people he helped would mutter about how after he had finished, the 
amplifier was built like a radio transmitter ...

Same friend built himself a tape recorder, when such things were few and far 
between, and definitely not found in homes (he worked for a state 
broadcasting organisation at the time IIRC). Had the bias oscillator working 
nicely, at the correct frequency somewhere around 50kHz - until he went into 
record mode and connected the erase head to the oscillator, at which point 
it oscillated at somewhere around 400MHz. Problem turned out to be length of 
wire between the valve and the bias oscillator tuned circuit. The tuned 
circuit drastically dropped in Q when the erase head loaded it, and the 
wires became a nice high Q transmission line at 400MHz. Cure was to move the 
oscillator tuning capacitor to the other end of the wires by putting it on 
the valve socket. 

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