Coyne Electrical School circa 1943

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SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
On another cleaning binge and came across this. Thought some of you other Old Farts might find it interesting. Lots of old steam piston driven generators driving electric motors, godawful contraptions they called pony relays and plenty of other antiques. It does however include vacuum tubes. A lot of the old stuff was battery operated since electrical distribution systems were still in the early stages of construction during those times.

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MaxHeadRoom

Joined Jul 18, 2013
28,619
Notice the fig 14 of the flat iron, power outlets had not come into vogue for older residences, so a two pin Edison light socket screw adapter was used for a non-grounded appliance!
Max.
 

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SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
There are 3 volumes comprising over 1200 pages with illustrations/photos on almost every page in the set. A real walk through history almost a good as a museum tour. The wall telephone is battery powered with a magneto crank to ring the operator. Interesting they talk about the battery as a current source instead of voltage.
 
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SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Not just on the phones. I haven't read much of it but the only place it noted any voltage was on light bulbs. 3 different bulbs, 110V, 115V, 120V and that seemed a bit odd. These had to have been my fathers when he was a teenager as his dad had died in the late 20s. Dad received a congressional appointment to the Merchant Marine Academy during the war and became an Engineering Officer on Liberty ships and after war in addition to his Marine Engineering degree went to GA Tech and also got his Mechanical Engineering degree. I was born in New Port News VA when he was designing the propellers for the SS United States which was a hush hush secret clearance project to ostensibly make a Passenger Liner which was actually designed for fast troop transport in case we had to go back into Europe. I completely forgot I had them.
 

dendad

Joined Feb 20, 2016
4,452
That is a neat find!
I've been looking through my Dad's "Drake's Radio Cyclopedia", Third edition, 1929. It has some really interesting old history.
 

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SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Being a Ham I have actually heard about it but never saw one unless it was an extract from it somewhere. Somewhere around here I have some 50-60s ARRL handbooks all vacuum tube stuff.
 

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SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
Any spark gap transmitters??? Those things sound horrible but in their day it was leading edge technology. No tone, just a huge noise in an otherwise silence on the airwaves across a huge amount of bandwidth. When I was teaching HS Science I would tell the kids about my grandfather. He was born at the turn of the century. No indoor plumbing, no electricity, horse and buggy transportation, mostly sailing ships and of course no airplanes until almost the 20s and he fought in WWI. He lived to be 96 and during his life, we had cars with paved roads, electric lighting, telephones, radio, TV, air transportation, put a man on the moon, personal computers, and importantly down here in coastal GA air conditioning.
 

KL7AJ

Joined Nov 4, 2008
2,229
On another cleaning binge and came across this. Thought some of you other Old Farts might find it interesting. Lots of old steam piston driven generators driving electric motors, godawful contraptions they called pony relays and plenty of other antiques. It does however include vacuum tubes. A lot of the old stuff was battery operated since electrical distribution systems were still in the early stages of construction during those times.

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I have one of my dad's old ATT long lines manuals...and back then they were ALREADY experimenting with time division multiplexing...using mechanical commutator/distributors of all things! Also, there is a description of a b-directional hybrid amplifier. Pretty smart cookies considering the limited hardware they had available!
 

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SamR

Joined Mar 19, 2019
5,031
The telephone and Bell Labs in particular had a HUGE impact on electronics. Far more than Edison, Tesla and Westinghouse who were more power distribution, lighting and motors driven. You could even pin electronics all the way back to the telegraph and it's resulting in the founding of ATT&T or actually, it's predecessor American Telegraph Company. It took a lot of small sparks of scientific advances over a couple of centuries but it soon became a raging fire.
 
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