Complete collection of Popular Electronics (1954-1982) as PDF

[Jope]

Came across it on reddit: www.americanradiohistory.com/Popular-Electronics-Guide.htm

[ozwolf]

Thanks for that.  I just downloaded May 1955 (my birthday).  Very interesting to see the state of electronics back then.  In the mid 1960's I can remember my father giving me the tubes (valves) from the TV set, I'd bicycle to the local drugstore (pharmacy), test them on a tube tester, and purchase any replacements needed.  Here's a link to an image of one of these machines http://radioflyer1980.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/obsolete-knowledge/.

Ozwolf

[Macbeth]

Thanks for that.  I just downloaded May 1955 (my birthday).  Very interesting to see the state of electronics back then.  In the mid 1960's I can remember my father giving me the tubes (valves) from the TV set, I'd bicycle to the local drugstore (pharmacy), test them on a tube tester, and purchase any replacements needed.  Here's a link to an image of one of these machines http://radioflyer1980.wordpress.com/2008/06/07/obsolete-knowledge/.

Ozwolf

Heh, in the early 1970's I would take the valves out into the back garden and stand them on "launch pads" and twirl them around in the air and imagine them as futuristic space rockets. I always had an affinity with electronics even as a toddler. Best toys ever - and they were free!

ETA: Thanks OP for the link - I just downloaded Nov 1970. I think I will get Dec 1970 too as I was born on the 30th. 

[dannyf]

I will train you at home for good pay jobs...

Sounds like 1950's version of internet-age scams,

Thanks, nice find.

[westfw]

Those are some awful scans :-(
Most of the text in the couple I downloaded was unreadable.

[Howardlong]

Well that lot will lose a few hours of my life!

Interesting to see how the publication changed from general hifi and radio through radio control, CB, digital electronics, homebrew computers and then finally to off the shelf computers and there's barely a schematic to be found.

Plenty of adverts in there for self-study I noticed, you don't see that anymore, I guess that's somehting else the internet has seen off.

[Richard Crowley]

Wow, that website is a gold-mine of electronic history.
I grew up reading PopTronics (and it's wanna-be competitor Electronics Illustrated).
And in later years, I subscribed to (or regularly borrowed) several other magazines there.

I always considered the schematic drawing style PopTronics used to be the de-facto STANDARD against which all others are compared.
I was born in the same year as the transistor (and before PopTronics began). So, by the time I started reading PE, it was mostly transistors and few tube circuits.

[Rory]

I used jDownloader to capture the links to the PDF files and download the entire catalog. Nice to have a search feature for many of them, I was able to find an Electronics World article that my father had used to build an attic TV antenna in the 60s.  Nice too, can keyword search most of the individual PDFs if using Acrobat Reader.

[westfw]

Well, THAT'S interesting.  The downloads look MUCH better viewed with acrobat than they do with Apple Preview.  I don't think I've ever seen that before...

[Whales]

I'm going to lose some life to this as well.  Thanks for sharing the find

Well, THAT'S interesting.  The downloads look MUCH better viewed with acrobat than they do with Apple Preview.  I don't think I've ever seen that before...

It looks like they are using some strange down-scaling filter, considering the scans are just images and not text.  Perhaps they found other methods were too slow on the hardware for things like rapid-scrolling and never bothered to implement a better quality rescaler for when you pause on a page.

Alternatively the apple preview may have a broken JPEG decoder, but I doubt it would manifest problems like that at resolutions this high.

EDIT: Someone has run an OCR on the these scans!  You can drag and select text. 

[Richard Crowley]

The downloads look MUCH better viewed with acrobat ...

Ahhh.  I was wondering what you were on about.   
Does the image improve if you "preview" it at 100% instead of some irrational reduced ratio?
The scans look excellent in a proper PDF viewier.
Because of the security vulnerabilities, my employer has banned Acrobat and replaced it with Foxit Reader.

[dannyf]

There is also this online collection of old Radioshack catalogs.

Those good old times.
 

[Macbeth]

I have to admit to finding old newspapers (and I mean really old, like Victorian/Edwardian era) absolutely fascinating. Not so much for the news articles (unless it's something major like declaring war, etc), but for the adverts.

It's the same old hocus-pocus bunkum, only using deadly Radium instead of Homeopathy or Magnets. What goes around comes around with snake-oil.

Also, the adverts for devices to relieve females from their hysteria are always fun. I wonder of Wun Hung Lo could reproduce such a device and get a CE mark or TUV approval nowadays? In fact are there any recorded deaths of females trying to cure hysteria by deathly mechanical vibration devices plugged directly into the mains with no earth safety whatsoever?

[Vgkid]

^^^
in a related note, I have always liked looking at the reproduction Sears & Roebuck catalogs from the early 1900's

[Macbeth]

^^^
in a related note, I have always liked looking at the reproduction Sears & Roebuck catalogs from the early 1900's

Thank you! Just a quick google shows up such things as a $1.55 revolver, cocaine wine "for fatigue of mind and body", a huge Colonial house for $1569, and Ladies Safety Belts for 13 cents.

Those were the days!

[BennVenn]

I will train you at home for good pay jobs...

Sounds like 1950's version of internet-age scams,

Thanks, nice find.

I've always wondered about those courses. Does anyone have a scan of the actual course material?

[Seekonk]

Will I finally get my answer?  In the early 60's when I was just a sprout they had an article about holding a cheap transistor radio upside down and it would stop working.  I swear I did that and it didn't work also.   I'll have to search all the April issues.    Remember the Black Noise Generator project.  It was a loop of wire inside an empty black bean soup can connected to a BNC.
.

[Richard Crowley]

It was a loop of wire inside an empty black bean soup can connected to a BNC.

At the proper frequency, that is a resonant cavity.  Of course nobody was using those frequencies back then. At least not people that read PopTronix.
Remeniscent of another thread I was just reading...https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/block-of-aluminum-rf-black-magic/

As for hoaxes, my favorite was the "Contra-Polar Energy" where they had photos showing a lamp sucking all the light and leaving darkness, and a soldering iron with icicles hanging.

http://www.americanradiohistory.com/hd2/IDX-Consumer/Archive-Poptronics-IDX/IDX/50s/55/Pop-1955-04-OCR-Page-0027.pdf#search=%22contra polar%22

[crusader66]

I found this interesting from the issue when I was born. <Feb 1973>

"A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE
By Milton S. Switzer, Editor
Some months ago, 400 top managers from the electronics industry got
together in Chicago to look into the near future and forecast the shape
and size of their industry a dozen years from now. In 1985, the world
electronics market will be nearly $200 billion, of which the U.S. share will
be about $81 billion. Of this latter figure, the industrial market is expected
to account for $45.5 billion, government sales $22.5 billion, and consumer
sales $12.9 billion.
From the same meeting, sponsored by the EIA (Electronic Industries
Assn.) here are some predictions for products in the consumer area.
George Simkowski of Bell & Howell predicted that we'll have octaphonic
(8- channel) "moving sound" by 1985. He also thinks that the leading
audio -visual product will be a low -cost video disc, the sales of which could
reach 5 million yearly."

[crusader66]

In fact, if you read through the Editorial on page 6 of Feb 1973, the predictions made are interesting.  Boy, I sure hope that video disc and flat screen TV thing works out.  Especially the ones that can fit in a brief case!!