Flea market find: 1960s resistor decadebank

[Kjelt]

So I went to a local fleamarket this morning, since you never know what you find.
Most is garbage but sometimes there are little gems to be found.

Anyway there was not much to be found since it was not an electronics fleamarket but then I stumbled upon this resistor decadebank which has a beautifull wooden enclosure and these great knobs you dreamt of when you were young.
For a few euro's to a good cause I could not resist taking it home, I guess i have a bit of a hoarder virus but luckily not the worst one
 
At home I first looked up the unknown manufacturer: dr C.E.Bleeker, Zeist Holland.
Not very much information to be found but in a brief online dutch biography you can see it was a woman.
That is a surprise a female PhD in electronics/optics in the 30s that is very special. She created the business early 30s with precision instruments and she esp. became succesfull with the phase contrast microscope.
End of the 60s the company was taken over and 1978 was closed.

Nice some piece of bygone history, back to the resistors
It still looks amazingly good, few scratches on the wood, almost none on the black metal surface, this thing has been hardly used.
From the high serial number 57456 i guess it is probably from the 1960s.

So what will be inside, the standard rotary switches with a lot of resistors probably but there is only one way to find out, as Dave always says: take it apart

[Kjelt]

When taking out the screws there was one screw that was hidden with some black stuff. You can spot it on the first picture in the first post.
Probably this is the back in the day version of the "void sticker". YEESSSSS this means it was never opened again since it was produced, hence no dumbass can have ruined it. 

Opening this bank up reveiled some heavy duty rotaries with copper and brass. The resistors are handwound and the higher ohm are sealed with some white probaly isolation stuff.
How good this thing already looked from the outside the innside made me smile, I love this oldschool brass/copper 500 years lasting designs.

Now lets see if this device is still usable were it was manufactured for. I tested it with a 4 point resistance measurement on my Keithley 2000 which has not been calibrated for 10 years so hard to say what is what.
But I just wanted to see if there was damage to any of the banks.
Happily to say it measures fine. There was some deviation but these are mainly due to contactresistance. Rotating the switches 10 times with a bit of IPA and it was all within 0,1% which is pretty good.

So I am a happy owner, gonna give it a fancy place in the shack, I don't know if I am going to use it regularly but i couldn't watch this thing being thrown away.
Anyone else out there that has more info or also takes these kind of stuff with him from flea markets or whatever other old school tech story, please post.

[BurningTantalum]

Words fail me. It is beautiful.
I wonder how many thousands of items of this quality end up in landfill each year.
My friend has just returned form England where she cleared out the house of her deceased father. He was an engineer of some note and I knew him well. I asked what had happened to his workshop and tools- she had ditched the lot in a skip.

[SeanB]

57456 probably is week 45 of 1957, number six in the week. Thus made November 1957, and thus nearly 58 years old. The resistors were probably wound earlier the year in batches to value, and the low value ones were most likely measured off of a reel and soldered in after getting the value exact.

[Deathwish]

My friend has just returned form England where she cleared out the house of her deceased father. He was an engineer of some note and I knew him well. I asked what had happened to his workshop and tools- she had ditched the lot in a skip.

Typical !, for the vast majority of females if it isn't fluffy, wont sit on the bed or want a diaper change then it is useless, thank god there are a small percentage with real intelligence still about.

[dom0]

Well if you don't educate your people about such things then don't insult them for not doing it right.

e: post 555

[c4757p]

Typical !, for the vast majority of females if it isn't fluffy, wont sit on the bed or want a diaper change then it is useless, thank god there are a small percentage with real intelligence still about.

Oh, shut up.

[Vgkid]

That is a beautiful decade box. Interesting how they have each decade able to be tapped off.

[zapta]

.. thank god there are a small percentage with real intelligence still about.

Try to join that group. It's never too late.

[Kjelt]

57456 probably is week 45 of 1957, number six in the week. Thus made November 1957, and thus nearly 58 years old.

You think so? That would be neat. Or perhaps nr 456 of the year 1957. I need to see more versions to deduce that, by now I know there are multiple around.
Even two advertised somewhere in the past on our local ebay: marktplaats. But only google can find it, at marktplaats it is gone.
Interesting though that it states:

[Twee weerstandsbanken van dr. Bleeker'soptiek- en instrumentenfabriek, zeist. No. 34066 s uit 1957 + no,37004

so to translate two resistor banks of the same manufacturer but it says that the No. 34066 is from 1957. Unsure how they found that out, maybe there was a date inside theirs.

Oh well it doesn't matter, this afternoon put a little wax on the wood that it desperately needed and it looks pretty need in my shack right now 

[Simon]

My friend has just returned form England where she cleared out the house of her deceased father. He was an engineer of some note and I knew him well. I asked what had happened to his workshop and tools- she had ditched the lot in a skip.

Typical !, for the vast majority of females if it isn't fluffy, wont sit on the bed or want a diaper change then it is useless, thank god there are a small percentage with real intelligence still about.

There is little demad for old tools in the UK because all of the cheap crap available that people think is better because it's shinnier and digital

[onlooker]

The rotary construction is very similar to GR1432/1433. Were they related in someway?

[dom0]

That's actually a quite common construction for resistance decades, since the large contact surface and high contact force means excellent repeatability.

[onlooker]

Ok, do you have any specific models that show a similar level of similarity in mind?   

[dom0]

I saw similar switches on a resistance decade made by Wolf Berlin (also very nice black metal panel and a wood case) and at least one other, but I'm not sure of the exact manufacturer, it was some East German VEB.

[eas]

My friend has just returned form England where she cleared out the house of her deceased father. He was an engineer of some note and I knew him well. I asked what had happened to his workshop and tools- she had ditched the lot in a skip.

Typical !, for the vast majority of females if it isn't fluffy, wont sit on the bed or want a diaper change then it is useless, thank god there are a small percentage with real intelligence still about.

Let me see if I have this straight:

• An old man died without making arrangements to ensure his tools found an appreciative new owner.
• BurningTantalum knew this old man, well, and knew that he was an engineer.
• BurningTantalum is an engineer, or at least feels an affinity for the profession.
• BurningTantalum's friend, the daughter of the deceased engineer, had to figure out how to dispose of the personal effects of her deceased father in a country she apparently doesn't reside.

So, an utterly predictable chain of events unfolds. The two engineers involved totally fail to make mitigations. After the fact, a third engineer (I'm assuming), upon learning of the outcome, blames the daughter, and, indeed, most people of her gender for solving her the problem she was left to solve in a manner in which she found suitable.

What's wrong with this picture?

Oh, shut up.

Seconded!

Well if you don't educate your people about such things then don't insult them for not doing it right.

e: post 555

Agreed!

[Kjelt]

The rotary construction is very similar to GR1432/1433. Were they related in someway?

There are still firms making these.
Here is a dutch firm and they state in their pdf that it is developed according to the Bleeker principle, so I guess that she was the first in the 30's and other companies have taken over the idea for their own line of products. Will have to do a patent search to find out more probably.
http://www.huyser.nl/www-frames/pdf%20files/31000.pdf

[blackbird]

That's a nice piece of instrumentation or better: 'stukje vakwerk'. And no, this does not mean 'piece of timber' like google translate would like you, non-dutchies, to believe. 

[PA4TIM]

You wanted to see more decades, these are all the (commercial) resistance decades  I have.


A 0,02% Siemens decade from 1956, very heavy and gorgeous sexy switches.  more here: http://www.pa4tim.nl/?p=5320


A 0,05% GR decade, In as new condition. Like yours the switches needed some TLC more: http://www.pa4tim.nl/?p=5309


A 0,1%  Danbridge, a baby decade http://www.pa4tim.nl/?p=4699


My oldest, A 1930's 0,1%  GR decade: http://www.pa4tim.nl/?p=3163


A ESI RV722 KV divider, no % here, that would have to much zero's. We are talking sub-ppm here

More resistor porn in the even more expensive Fluke 720:

More resistor porn in the even more expensive Fluke 720: http://www.pa4tim.nl/?p=2332

I have more resistance standards but these are the decades. I need them for my work. I repair test and calibration gear as a living.

[dom0]

Those are some seriously nice switches. Also, that 1956 Siemens looks pretty much exactly like the Wolf Berlin decade, so it's probably a relabeled Wolf Berlin.

[Kjelt]

Very nice collection PA4TIM, will have a read on your site 

[Fungus]

Typical !, for the vast majority of females if it isn't fluffy, wont sit on the bed or want a diaper change then it is useless, thank god there are a small percentage with real intelligence still about.

Same for the vast majority of males. If it isn't delivering beer, taking its clothes off or moving pig bladders around a field then it's useless.

[Fungus]

Back on topic, that thing is beautiful.

[Kjelt]

That really is a thing of beauty. How accurate is it? I bet it's still within cal.

After a bit of cleaning and turning it was within 0,1% AFAICT. The most deviation will be in the wire resistance between the decades. Each decade measured on its own are very well within 0,1%

[Circlotron]

So I went to a local fleamarket this morning, since you never know what you find.
 I could not resist taking it home,

Now that you have this thing, you can ...resist... to any extent you choose.