Indeed. Must be the cold gloomy weather this time of year....and the non stop really crappy Christmas music that seems to be on every radio station all day long. What ever happened to the songs that were so good you sang along with them?
My washer, dryer, fridge, and stove were ancient when I bought my house in 1984.
We've talked about this, Phil. An old fridge is an energy hog. Lucky for you, rates are pretty low in the Pacific Northwest, but you'd still stand to save a goodly sum by replacing it with one of the latest high efficiency models. There are online calculators you can use to estimate annual savings, based on your old model, a comparable new model, and your kWh price.
A diesel with 300K miles is just about due for its first tune up.
Not sure if they are made any longer. Not much call for the "B" vacuum tube batteries any more and the 4.5V "B" battery has been replaced by 3 1.5V batteries.
An old fridge is an energy hog. Lucky for you, rates are pretty low in the Pacific Northwest, but you'd still stand to save a goodly sum by replacing it with one of the latest high efficiency models.
On a day-to-day basis, I'm sure you're right. But there's also the energy cost of manufacturing a new fridge, as well as the cost of replacing the new fridge or its compressor when the latter fails. Old-style compressors, like the one in my fridge, are fully hermetically sealed and are bathed in the refrigerant and lubricating oil that they circulate, keeping them both cool and running smoothly. Newer compressors are built differently and have much higher failure rates.
But, yeah, when my 50-plus-year-old compressor finally gives up the ghost, it'll be time for a new fridge.
They were still available in 1976. Friend of mine built a electronic sculpture using one. A mass of neon oscillators in a tree of naked copper wire! http://www.bristolwatch.com/ele/neon.htm
Oddly I can't recall what we used for the heater supplies.
They were still available in 1976. Friend of mine built a electronic sculpture using one. A mass of neon oscillators in a tree of naked copper wire! http://www.bristolwatch.com/ele/neon.htm
Ah those neon RC oscillators. I built a very simple 4 bit computer using ttl chips in school and first prize went to an array of blinking neon lamps. Should have put some blinkers on my project.
Oddly I can't recall what we used for the heater supplies.
Meh. You're not even old enough to be interesting unless you recall when REAL radios were powered by lead acid batteries, which were a PITA to get recharged and leaked acid, burning holes in your woolen carpet!
Apparently, my paternal grandfather, a German immigrant, was one of those "radio fiends," albeit not a wealthy one. My dad told stories of his tinkering with radios and building sets from scratch. Once, he built a tall, cone-shaped speaker which he mounted in a corner of their living room, pointed towards the ceiling. It caused such a resonance with the ceiling that the plaster cracked and fell to the floor. I think I would have enjoyed knowing him, but he died when I was three.
Yep. I'm sure there were "radio fiends" buying whatever latest thing they could. As there are techno freaks today. Cough, iPhone customers.
Then there were "radio fiends" like my father, born in 1914 in Czechoslovakia, building their own radios because there was no way to even buy them at the time.
Later, on true nerds were building their own TVs.
Kind of like us guys trying to build computers from 6800 and 8080 chips in the late 1970's, before there was such a thing as a home/personal computer.
I do like the cone-speaker idea, sounds like an early Klipschorn!
You're not even old enough to be interesting unless you recall when REAL radios were powered by lead acid batteries, which were a PITA to get recharged and leaked acid, burning holes in your woolen carpet!
When I was in radio/tv tech school back in the seventies we one day got a 1934 (IIRC) Norwegian radio in to our little repair shop (the school operated one, as a business, but it was for practice so it was cheap for customers). (Ah, found it on the web - it says '1936', could be, even though I remember it as '34: http://www.nrhf.no/Tandberg/TR Radio/T-Battsuper-1.html) It was one of those battery radios you described. The owner wanted it modified to run on mains. So I brought it to the lab, and connected it to the roof antenna just to check it out before we did anything to it. We all had to sit down, that radio could receive transmissions from all over the world, better than anything I had yet seen. Incredibly clear and sensitive. Never saw anything like it until many years later when I became a ham and started to use ham equipment with huge antennas. I'm still not sure if my current tranceiver is actually any better on reception than that battery 1934 radio.
The reletives in my family could only grow vegetables and make baked goods. Except for my maternal grandfather, he was a tinkerer and woodworker.
I'm glad I chose electronics as a pass time, I don't think there is anything else out there as engrossing. Some hobbies you learn all there is, and get board of it. I'll never learn it all, and there is always a new path for me to explore.
Mayhaps we need to start a one-tube radio thread to parallel our one servo robot efforts. And do NOT get me started on the "coincidence" that the radiation pattern of the classic dipole antenna is...
Comments
-Phil
Indeed. Must be the cold gloomy weather this time of year....and the non stop really crappy Christmas music that seems to be on every radio station all day long. What ever happened to the songs that were so good you sang along with them?
We've talked about this, Phil. An old fridge is an energy hog. Lucky for you, rates are pretty low in the Pacific Northwest, but you'd still stand to save a goodly sum by replacing it with one of the latest high efficiency models. There are online calculators you can use to estimate annual savings, based on your old model, a comparable new model, and your kWh price.
A diesel with 300K miles is just about due for its first tune up.
George Carlin
There were "B" batteries at one time. See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_battery_sizes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_(vacuum_tube)
Not sure if they are made any longer. Not much call for the "B" vacuum tube batteries any more and the 4.5V "B" battery has been replaced by 3 1.5V batteries.
But, yeah, when my 50-plus-year-old compressor finally gives up the ghost, it'll be time for a new fridge.
-Phil
Many of us agree.
The Force is strong with these old ones.
Myself included!
Moan, whine, grump, curmudge...
Strangely the B battery of my youth, the 90 volt EverReady 126, is not listed there.
http://www.the-thompson-brown-family.co.uk/batteries/pages/b126.htm
They were still available in 1976. Friend of mine built a electronic sculpture using one. A mass of neon oscillators in a tree of naked copper wire!
http://www.bristolwatch.com/ele/neon.htm
Oddly I can't recall what we used for the heater supplies.
Probably one of those big 12V lantern batteries.
The king of rants: George Carlin
WARNING: Offensive Language
EDIT: OP removed link because of inappropriate language.
that's the Internet of things if you look him up.
Should of gave it more than the Evelyn Wood course this morning.
Ed Sullivan never had anything like that.
Meh. You're not even old enough to be interesting unless you recall when REAL radios were powered by lead acid batteries, which were a PITA to get recharged and leaked acid, burning holes in your woolen carpet!
From here:
Edit: Ack, can't embed and can't edit this post to add a pic. See next post.
But hey, brilliant:
'Wealthy "radio fiends" thought nothing of replacing their sets with a new model every year or two.'
And so it has continued through the TV, PC, iPhone generations...
Anyway, I burned enough holes in clothes and carpets with lead acid batteries in my time.
-Phil
Then there were "radio fiends" like my father, born in 1914 in Czechoslovakia, building their own radios because there was no way to even buy them at the time.
Later, on true nerds were building their own TVs.
Kind of like us guys trying to build computers from 6800 and 8080 chips in the late 1970's, before there was such a thing as a home/personal computer.
I do like the cone-speaker idea, sounds like an early Klipschorn!
The reletives in my family could only grow vegetables and make baked goods. Except for my maternal grandfather, he was a tinkerer and woodworker.
I'm glad I chose electronics as a pass time, I don't think there is anything else out there as engrossing. Some hobbies you learn all there is, and get board of it. I'll never learn it all, and there is always a new path for me to explore.
A FIGURE 8!