[Thursday] The Transistor is 75 years old!

[Ken Carr]

Mike,Amen to all.We need to carefully choose what we restoreand then put it in service in such a manner thatour visitors can enjoy seeing it operate and asoften as possible being the operator.

How many people have never in their life tunedin a live foreign broadcast on a complicated-lookingshortwave receiver from the 1950’s? They will be able todo it at NEWSM. It’s a lot of fun!

NEWSM.orgWPRAACA.comIDLENOT.com

On Sunday, December 18, 2022, 9:28 AM, Michael Thompson via Thursday <thursday at newsm.org> wrote:

That is a common discussion in the restoration forums.
I refer one school of thought as the Smithsonian. Everything donated is an artifact to be conserved and possibly displayed. Everything is a static display, nothing is interactive. I am not a fan of this philosophy.
I think that interacting with an artifact yields a completely different and better experience than just observing. Our visitors always comment that the giant steam engines are really quiet. A static display won’t give that experience. Using an electric motor to turn the engine gives a false sense of the engines behavior. We do a really good job of keeping our steam powered artifacts near original condition and operating the way they were designed. Running them at 1/10 of the normal speed is a safety issue, and our visitors understand that.
We made a new cylinder head for the exploded Corliss. You can’t see the new part, and now the engine runs and can be demonstrated. We even kept the original parts so we could restore it to the exploded and nonfunctional condition.
Our wireless side needs a lot of improvement. Few of the artifacts are demonstrable, and we have way too many things on display. We are working on restorations, but that takes time. Thelissa has some great ideas on improving the wireless displays. That will also take time.
Ken is restoring a National radio. He is replacing old components with modern ones, but the new components are inside the chassis where you can’t see them. It will look original, and our visitors will be able to interact with it.
The board is working on some policies to guide the museum. We should collect everyone’s ideas on preserving and restoring artifacts and write some guidelines for future projects.
On Dec 16, 2022, at 4:54 PM, David Crowell via Thursday <thursday at newsm.org> wrote:


 One of the links in the Len's original link has some thoughts to ponder about restoring museum artifacts.Read the paragraphs in the section:
Overcoming the “inherent vice” of Bardeen’s music box

John Bardeen’s Terrific Transistorized Music Box

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John Bardeen’s Terrific Transistorized Music Box

In 1949 an engineer at Bell Labs built three music boxes that could electronically produce five distinct notes. ...
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Dave Crowell



    On Wednesday, December 14, 2022 at 06:10:17 PM EST, Len Arzoomanian via Thursday <thursday at newsm.org> wrote:  
 
 Some IEEE articles on the development of the Transistor. I like the fact that the inventors didn’t really understand how the point contact worked. Kind of like how a cats whisker becomes a diode when it touches a galena. It’s all magic!

Len

https://spectrum.ieee.org/special-reports/the-transistor-at-75/


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