But a brilliant stream of consciousness. There may have been transistors
in those radios that did nothing, but I distinctly remember there being
several transistors being used merely as diodes, with the collectors not
connected. I recall the smell of tube radios, with their phenolics and
waxes, and remember trailing Dad to the local drugstore to test tubes.
If a bad tube was found, the store manager appeared to open the cabinet
that the tester sat upon and, after fishing around inside for a few
moments, pulled out the replacement tube with a flourish.

How the flourish got into the cabinet in the first place has always
puzzled me.

--
Mike "Rocket J Squirrel" Elliott
------
On 8/15/2008 6:46 AM David Beierl wrote:

> At 02:35 PM 8/14/2008 -0600, Gary Lee www.vwrack.com wrote:
>> I am told that in the  70s there used to be tube testers and vacuum
>> tubes sold at the grocery store.  I guess people, just ordinary
>> people, would fix their own tvs and radios.  That was also a time
>
> Definitely '60s.  Fading in the '70s I think, as transistors took
> over.  Tubes were consumables and mounted in sockets (and on the
> opposite side of the steel chassis from the fiddly bits, so other
> than getting burnt they were pretty safe to deal with).  There were a
> gazillion table radios that all used the same set of five tubes whose
> filament voltages not coincidentally added up to 117 volts -- that's
> the sort of thing the drug store would carry.
>
> The testers were about the size of an open briefcase on a stand, big
> meter, bunch of dial switches, sockets for quad, octal, 7- and 9-pin
> miniature, clip lead for tubes with a top contact, and a big list of
> tube types with switch settings for each, maybe on a scroll behind a
> window on the tester.  Testing instructions printed on the
> machine.  So if your radio or TV got funny, you'd pull all the tubes
> and stick them in a paper bag (not so many plastic bags then) and
> take them to the drugstore, or Radio Shack, or Lafayette Radio, or a
> repair shop maybe, and test them all.  With any luck (or some
> patience) you wouldn't burn yourself much, and with *decent* luck you
> wouldn't have rubbed off the tube numbers, or would have wrapped a
> piece of paper around them with the number on it.
>
> There is absolutely nothing like the smell of tube electronics that's
> lived in the company of smokers.  Not bad, but distinctive.
>
> When we attended John Kennedy's funeral in fall '63, we also listened
> to it on a (paperback-size) Matsushita Electronics five-transistor
> AM-only radio that Dad got for CONELRAD alerts. Like most (?) radios
> then it had the two CONELRAD frequencies marked on the dial (Dad was
> an engineer, his version of two-weeks-rations for our "shelter" --
> the pantry under the cellar stairs -- was whatever was in the pantry
> plus our spare 50-lb bag of Purina dog chow).  Nice little radio,
> orange front and gray back. Cost maybe $50 or so?  Used a 9v
> battery.  We were far enough away that we heard it on the radio 2-3
> seconds before we heard it live.  That was maybe a little before the
> "transistor wars" when cheap radio brands (Lloyds comes to mind)
> would throw transistors at a design so they could boast about how
> many there were, like 23-jewel watches.  I think one or two maybe
> even stuck totally nonfunctional transistors on the board.  Circuit
> boards (Wow! Printed Circuits!) were single-sided phenolic/paper.
>
> Interesting times...if you get a chance to view Robert McNamera's
> _The Fog of War_ you'll get to see the then SecDef forty years later
> so frightened of what almost happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis
> that he still can't come right out and say the words.  You can see
> him try, and fail.  I recommend it -- I started to watch it
> perfunctorily because it had to go back to the store that night, and
> was absolutely riveted.
>
> </stream of consciousness>
>
> David
>
>
> --
> David Beierl - Providence RI USA -- http://pws.prserv.net/synergy/Vanagon/
> '84 Westy "Dutiful Passage," '85 GL "Poor Relation"
>