Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Retro
I just ran across a pretty cool (and expensive) web site the other day. Retro Thing. It's a web site about old and cool stuff. What really caught my eye was something called the Radiomann Tube Radio Kit. For those of you who don't know, a tube is a hot glass thing that burns your fingers and amplifies signals. It's similar to a very retro transistor or one little part of a retro integrated circuit.
I can remember taking a handful of tubes out of our black and white television and hauling them down to the drugstore where a very cool tube tester console sat. We'd put the tubes in the appropriate socket and set a knob or two and watch the tube glow. I think there was a meter that would then show whether the tube was bad, poor or good. You'd replace the bad ones with a new one - they had them in the bottom of the console and take them back home and replace it. Surprisingly enough this often did fix the TV problem.
Anyway, I saw this radio kit and Hammacher Schlemmer had them on sale for $60. Half price. Oh well, out came the credit card and soon I had an order acknowledgement back in email. That was Monday night and this afternoon, the package was on my porch floor!
I'm a little surprised as to the quality of this thing. The case is maybe 1/2" nicely finished cherry with neatly mounted components on the top. It's not so much a kit as it is an experiment platform. The only parts you need to assemble is to plug one of two coils and the tube. Everything is already put together. It does need 8 AA batteries - after all, you need to heat that tube up - but other than that it's ready to go. The manual is thin, but high quality glossy color. It's written in Germany, translated in America and printed in China. I'm still trying to find the country of origin for the radio kit itself.
Very cool and I'm looking forward to plugging it in, adding an antenna and listen into Fibber McGee and Molly or maybe the Green Hornet.
