If you were a electronic hobbyist 55 years ago this is the type of projects you would be building. The visual point to point diagram is great, it reminds me of an old version of Fritzing. If the circuit wasn’t enough, the English grammar is also interesting, on the first page AM is spelled ayem. The woman in the front page picture look happy even though there is only one chair to go around. 🙂 I have never seen a capacitor with a uufd designation before, I thought it was a typo at first but it is used many times. There is also no shortage of squiggles in their resistor designations. Interesting how some things have changed slightly and how other items have stood the test of time.
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uufd is what we now call picofarads
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Hi Mike,
Thanks for the info.
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Ah… I can’t wait to go visit my grandparents next week. They have all sorts of old magazines like this laying around. Most of the pages have been eaten by wasps, but they’re still readable. I love how the whole article is pretty much a sales speech, yet there’s nothing actually for sale. The “cram it all into a box” (wedge the batteries in with cardboard? really?) theme made me chuckle, too.
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For those who don’t have their own stash of vintage tech magazines try Google Books.
For example Popular Mechanics back to early 1900s.
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Vc8DAAAAMBAJ
Then get on ebay, buy some old junk and build something crazy!
Remember to search on “tube amplifier” or similar – it’s an American publication. The earlier copies use the old American circut symbols which are a little different to old UK style.