Before there was Make…

So, both of my grandfathers were engineers in their own way. My grandfather on my father’s side (Ed Joyce) was a mechanic in the merchant marine during “the” war. My grandfather on my mother’s side (Ed Latimer.. what are the odds?) worked with the army air corps at one of their Radar Research Facilities in Arizona. He later worked as a foreman with Ma Bell for basically the rest of his life… One of his past times was curb collecting electronics and repairing them. Thanks to him every kid in my home had a black and white tube tv growing up… which was a little odd since color televisions were 20 years old at that point =P. Anyways when he passed he left some old electronics stuff that was passed off to me. A pretty awesome old tube tester, bunch of tubes, and various ancient components… but also some old service news magazines. Which had articles on how to service televisions and radios, and discussion of the technology of the time. Pretty amazing stuff. A window into a bygone era so to speak. All the documents are now public domain according to my research so enjoy!

Anyways I figured I’d take some shots of them and upload them for you all to gawk at. I am truly amazed by the systems “the greatest generation” developed. It must have been a really exciting time to be alive. I can only imagine that there were groups like NYCR back then working on many of the same things using a whole different array of tools.