It started in the late 70's. Several big chip manufacturers (Signetics, National....) printed up some totally bogus, but humorous fictitious data sheets. This continued well into the 80's, but most never made it into the digital world since the paper sheets were long lost before scanners and PDF's existed. Some of these "parts" even made the engineering press as joke "new product" releases.
There was a Dark Emitting Diode in the 80's, but someone must have remembered it in 2015 and created this article....for the April 1 edition.
https://www.edn.com/electronics-pro...odes--ZeDEDs--deliver-10X-more-Dark-Flux-Watt
There were tubes, Write Only Memories, and First In Never Out shift registers and more. The Dark Emitting Diode's data sheet, and many others, have faded from existence, but people still Google them as if they were real parts.
Note the required filament voltage in the enclosed Signetics data sheet, and the reference to the LS/MFT report for the tube. LSMFT was the slogan used for a popular TV commercial in the 60's......for cigarettes.
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I'm bringing an amplifier to BAF this weekend, which uses one of the 1970s-era-datasheet-with-jokes parts. Actually two: one per stereo channel. The amp itself works well, sounds great, and it will be powered up and playing music during the exhibit. Stop by and have a listen. I'm also bringing the datasheet, dated August 1971.
"Because of its unique construction, the 606 can serve as an oscillator, modulator, or amplifier. It usually serves as all three simultaneously."
This technology is now common.
(OK, it always was....)
E-V had the rear-axial loudspeaker (used a part from the 606). WOW!!!
Crown had the BelchFire (low ozone production):
http://www.repeater-builder.com/molotora/gontor/belchfire.pdf
I had never heard of the LM80/LM280/LM580/LM680/LM880 Precision Pre-Earthquake Motion Sensors, sheet dated October 17, 1989 5:04 PM (someone here remembers when).
What’s All This Prank Stuff, Anyhow? | Electronic Design
I have seen even older bumph than these. Not to mention mechanic's wrenches advertised with female mechanics not wearing work-safe clothing. As you say, pre-Internet is not well preserved.
This technology is now common.
(OK, it always was....)
E-V had the rear-axial loudspeaker (used a part from the 606). WOW!!!
Crown had the BelchFire (low ozone production):
http://www.repeater-builder.com/molotora/gontor/belchfire.pdf
I had never heard of the LM80/LM280/LM580/LM680/LM880 Precision Pre-Earthquake Motion Sensors, sheet dated October 17, 1989 5:04 PM (someone here remembers when).
What’s All This Prank Stuff, Anyhow? | Electronic Design
I have seen even older bumph than these. Not to mention mechanic's wrenches advertised with female mechanics not wearing work-safe clothing. As you say, pre-Internet is not well preserved.
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That would be the Rigid Tools yearly calendar. The "mechanics" were not actually engaged in any activity requiring safe clothing, so minimal clothing was worn.
My boss in the cal lab at Motorola had a good collection of these data sheets. His wife was a sales rep at National Semi.
One of my co workers who was skilled in the art of "copy machine manipulation" made up a data sheet for a fuse that I had made for a power supply on my bench. I was known for blowing stuff up back then, and I had an old Sorensen power supply with no current limiting, just a 10 amp output fuse. After rebuilding the supply with the biggest and baddest transistors in the Motorola semi catalog, the output fuse was a mere nuisance. So I simply took a blown 3AG fuse filled it full of melted solder and replaced the end cap while it was still liquid, creating the.......
When a conventional fuse becomes a nuisance, and a Slo-Blo fuse still isn't strong enough, you need the new "George Proof" No-Blo fuse. You will never replace a fuse again! So strong that it's guaranteed for the life of the equipment that it's installed in. Guarantee covers only the fuse, and does not cover fuses damaged by fire, smoke or other undesirable side effects.
As with all the other data sheets, the boss took them with him when he transferred to another Motorola plant. I lost touch with him when most of the plants were shut down in the 1990's.
There is possibly still paper copies of some of them somewhere in a box that was hastily packed when I had to move 1200 miles on 3 weeks notice from a house where I had lived for 37 years.
You jogged my memory of a truly weird experience I had about seventeen years ago.
I was living and working in the Los Angeles are at the time. One day I was contacted by a senior tech guy working at a premier research university in the region. He wanted me to build him a small low-power FM transmitter using a tunnel diode.
A bit unusual, but no problem, so I said okay, and negotiated a visit to one of the research labs at the university in exchange.
It was only after I built and gave him the little FM transmitter that he told me why he wanted it. Somebody high up in his department read somewhere that time goes backwards during quantum tunneling (the thing that makes tunnel diodes work.) So this person reasoned that if you connected a seismometer to the tunnel-diode FM transmitter, you could detect a seismic tremor in the earth...BEFORE IT HAPPENED!
I tried to keep my face straight and my lower jaw off the floor, probably without much success.
P.S. I did get the lab visit, and really enjoyed it.
-Gnobuddy
I had a tech who was well versed in solid state stuff totally terrified when I told him not to turn on a device containing a "backward wave oscillator" without all the shields in place. The backward waves that it creates will have a serious interaction with all the normal forward waves like 60 Hz that are all around us. All the danger and caution stickers inside the device reinforced that fear.
A BWO is a vacuum tube device for generating GHz and beyond high frequency RF signals. The caution stickers were because of the magnets that are used in some such tubes to put a spin on the electron beam. The "device" was al old military RF spectrum analyzer that weighed more than I did at the time. All totally harmless unless it fell on your foot.
We used tunnel diodes or varactors to make "cloaking devices" until we found that a hand full of ordinary 1N914 or 1N4148 high speed switching diode worked almost as good. The cloaking device.....Make a very noisy RF signal at about a watt or two in the 900 MHz region (hacked cell phone) and feed it to said diodes which were mounted in a DIY waveguide horn made from scrap PC board stock. Mount said device on the front of your car and you are cloaked to police radar......doesn't work on modern laser guns (LIDAR)
A BWO is a vacuum tube device for generating GHz and beyond high frequency RF signals. The caution stickers were because of the magnets that are used in some such tubes to put a spin on the electron beam. The "device" was al old military RF spectrum analyzer that weighed more than I did at the time. All totally harmless unless it fell on your foot.
We used tunnel diodes or varactors to make "cloaking devices" until we found that a hand full of ordinary 1N914 or 1N4148 high speed switching diode worked almost as good. The cloaking device.....Make a very noisy RF signal at about a watt or two in the 900 MHz region (hacked cell phone) and feed it to said diodes which were mounted in a DIY waveguide horn made from scrap PC board stock. Mount said device on the front of your car and you are cloaked to police radar......doesn't work on modern laser guns (LIDAR)
AFAICT, in the Rigid images the women wore clothes. While I would not run a pipe-threader in micro-jumper and cap, at least her gloves are tough, and she's not actually running the machine.
"Girlies" were widely used. Here's one with a spark-plug.
No, there was an obscure jacks and wrenches company in the 1950s with girlie-pix as randy as Playboy in the day. Full bosom, no pubic area, buck-naked. With a wrench. I can't find one at the moment and could not post it here. But if you have a Playboy from 1959, picture the centerfold with a mechanic's tool. There may be a mini-calendar on it but who cares?
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