Look What I Saw at the Dump

 

New Ipswich Transfer Station


New Ipswich Transfer Station

We no longer have a dump in traditional sense. We have a transfer station. However I have fond memories of Scofield Town Dump picking with my dad on Saturday in Stamford, CT. Old habits don't fade away, so I still check out the metal pile in New Ipswich to see what treasures I might find. Imagine my surprise when I saw an Oscilloscope.

Dumont Oscilloscope

I wasn't just any run of of the mill oscilloscope, it was made by DuMont Laboratories. They were pioneers in television technology. They were famous for their Cathode Ray Tubes, which is the heart of an Oscilloscope.

What the hell is an Oscilloscope?

In my opinion an oscilloscope is the ultimate electronic test instrument. It can graph an electrical signal in X-Y coordinates and display it on a CRT screen. If you've ever watched Outer Limits or Ernie Kovacs, you've seen an oscilloscope display.

Usually the electrical signal is plotted against time but if two sinusoidal signal are plotted against each other, you can get some interesting "outer limits" type displays known as Lissajous curves. It also can act as an voltmeter displaying voltage as a straight line on a grid.

I was able to use some really nice Tektronix oscilloscopes in my years at Digital Equipment Corporation, so I consider myself a s fairly adept with understanding them.

Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC)

Checking Voltages

This is not a photo of an oscilloscope. I was checking the voltage levels of power supplies with a Fluke multimeter. Years before this photo was taken my first job was working on timing boards for the PDP 11/45 Microprocessor. I used a Tektronix oscilloscope to assure that I had a nice clean clock pulse from the board. If it had extra humps I would remove a transistor till I found a good one. It was a weird job but I had plenty of time with that scope.

Baby Toy

I don't even remember how or why this happened,  but I asked to take an Oscilloscope home. I wanted to show my young son what his dad did everyday. This probably happened in 1977. I set it up on the dining room table and let him twist all the knobs. I used the onboard square wave generator as a display. He seemed to enjoy it.

Square Wave


Square Wave

Final Thoughts

I actually considered bringing this thing home from the dump (I mean transfer station).  However I realized taking a photo was probably a better choice. I doubt that it worked and it would be just another item in my collection of clutter. I encourage everyone to look for Ernie Kovacs videos.






Location: New Ipswich, NH 03071, USA

Comments

  1. DougFebruary 15, 2022 at 8:02 PM

    John, I know what you are talking about. My time with Honeywell in the early 60 I had one of those and used it every day. I have a box of old transistors, caps, and resistors that i kept.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Poltrack BlogFebruary 16, 2022 at 5:04 PM

    I still have a bunch of diodes, transistors and J-K flipflop chips... why?

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Water Loom Dragon

Image
 A Fire-Breathing Dragon I guess it was inevitable that Bill Tobin would come up with something special for the 1987 Regatta on Water Loom Pond. He was a builder with a creative mind. He wasn't going to settle with just a Loch Ness replica, this was a fully operational FIRE BREATHING Loch Ness replica. The Seal Of New Hampshire Years later, Bill would create his masterpiece. A larger than life three dimensional replica of Seal of New Hampshire. It made many appearances over the years such as this on in the Amherst, NH 2011 Fourth of July parade. I never did learn what became of the dragon. Perhaps some misty morning I might spot it at Water Loom belching fire.
Read more

Drained Smithville Reservoir

Image
I've been taking a morning walk with my friends John and Angelika Weber and their son Parker by the Smithville Reservoir for over 10 years. We've seen it flood and we've seen it drained. These photos were taken in September of 2006. I'm not sure why they drained it, but I'll guess the fish and otters were not happy about it. The flood control dams were constructed in the 1960s as a response to occurrences of repetitive flooding. The worst flooding occurred in 1936 and the hurricane of 1938. Dam Site 35 is 30 feet high and 1,209 feet long. Smithville Reservoir (Dam Site 35) holds 1,787 acre-feet of water. The Souhegan River's headwaters are located in New Ipswich, the flood control dams hold back the water during heavy rains, They are earthern structures that slow the release of the water but don't stop it completely. New Ipswich has 4 of the 12 sites on the Souhegan River. John and Butch check out the Smithville Reservor as Bud the dog looks o...
Read more

Five Years Ago - 4th of July Pool Party

Image
"Summertime, and the livin' is easy Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin' So hush little baby, Don't you cry..." I created this blog as a narrative of moments in time over the years in pictures. This is only possible because digital photo files have accurate time stamps. Because of this I can confirm that Kathy was sipping a beer on her deck at 3:08:47 PM on July 2nd in 2011 when they hosted a Independence Day party. I named this blog Only a Picture Stops Time because it is a collection of stopped moments in time. Five years ago: Our hostess Fourth of July Red, White and Blue Discussions Pool Time Ginny Relaxes Keeping Cool Summertime Mike Dave I have photos available for sale
Read more