Do you remember ?

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junkhound

junkhound

Senior Member
Location
Renton, WA
Occupation
EE, power electronics specialty
A recent question by an apprentice got me to thinking:

How old were you when you understood what a switch was?
Thought to recall some of these for myself, as to understand the perspective of a grandkid or 20-something apprentice or even a retired engineer.

A contactor or relay ?
DIfference between parallel and series connections.
An SCR ?
A VFD?
How a delta-wye transformer works?
High voltage

Best of my recollection:
Switch - prior to learning to read

relay - cub scouts, about 8 YO

Parallel series - good example of ignorance. About 8 YO also, had a box full of expired 6 V lantern batteries, knew the 'textbook' definitions, but not practice. Hooked ten in paralle, good power to car headlight. Pop said series ws to connect +_ to minus in a string - I took the parallel set I had lined up on the table and turned every battery 180 deg so + to -, etc = you guessed it hot batteries due to short circuits.

SCR - about 12 YO, first one I got was totally amazed at how it acted like a latching relay with no moving parts!!!

VFD - college prof in 1964 has a research project for primitive motor drive

delta-wye; already had BSEE and in my 20s before I realized how the triplett harmonics short circuit in a delta primary.

high voltage: had gotten shocks ( tingle) from record player numerous times before 6 YO. At 8 YO thought to take back off B&W tube TV (were there any other kinds in the mid 50s?) and found out about HV when I got burnt by plate electrode on 6BQ6.
 
junkhound said:
A recent question by an apprentice got me to thinking:

How old were you when you understood what a switch was?
Thought to recall some of these for myself, as to understand the perspective of a grandkid or 20-something apprentice or even a retired engineer.

A contactor or relay ?
DIfference between parallel and series connections.
An SCR ?
A VFD?
How a delta-wye transformer works?
High voltage

Best of my recollection:
Switch - prior to learning to read

relay - cub scouts, about 8 YO

Parallel series - good example of ignorance. About 8 YO also, had a box full of expired 6 V lantern batteries, knew the 'textbook' definitions, but not practice. Hooked ten in paralle, good power to car headlight. Pop said series ws to connect +_ to minus in a string - I took the parallel set I had lined up on the table and turned every battery 180 deg so + to -, etc = you guessed it hot batteries due to short circuits.

SCR - about 12 YO, first one I got was totally amazed at how it acted like a latching relay with no moving parts!!!

VFD - college prof in 1964 has a research project for primitive motor drive

delta-wye; already had BSEE and in my 20s before I realized how the triplett harmonics short circuit in a delta primary.

high voltage: had gotten shocks ( tingle) from record player numerous times before 6 YO. At 8 YO thought to take back off B&W tube TV (were there any other kinds in the mid 50s?) and found out about HV when I got burnt by plate electrode on 6BQ6.
Click to expand...

Difference in knowing what a switch does and how it does it, many toddlers figure out it turns the light in the room on/off, probably not too many under age of 10 ever wonder how it does it.

I know how to wire a switch into a light circuit at age 9 or 10 but still didn't fully understand all the concepts of electricity. I did know some of the need for power to flow in a series through the switch and then to the light at that time, certainly didn't know much about the "source" part of the circuit - that was all just unexplained magic back then. I did understand there was a source for say the wiring in the house, but just didn't know what it was in comparison to a simpler flashlight circuit.
 
My brother is nine years older than me. While he was an apprentice he built up a board with contactors, relays, push buttons, etc for me to play with. At eight years old motor starters were 2nd nature. So was getting 240V up my arm, no RCD protection.

Early days at work:
VFD? Schrage motors to start with, VFD’s came later.
SCR? Grid controlled MAR.
Transformers? Again my brother to the rescue.
HV? I’ve been working on it since I was seventeen years old.
 
181223-1442 EST

junkhound:

SCR invented 1957. Not particularly available until about 1960, and quite expensive. So you are 12 in 1960, and in college at 16 learning about VFDs.

1951 CBS spinning disk color TV. Saw a demo in the summer of 1951 when BB-64 visited NY. Very good resolution, but a swinging baseball bat showed in three positions in three different colors. RCA 3 gun tube, 1953 first, 1954 production, saw a demo in 1954 and resolution was nothing like the CBS.

https://lancasteronline.com/news/rc...cle_2d5e6fb1-6c7d-55ce-82b8-255fe3c15497.html

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earliest recollection: Don't sit on a heat register when trying to figure out what that little tab is in the bottom on the lamp socket (power on):D..then preteen.. neighbor had a pendant fixture in their basement controlled by a pendant thumb-screw socket with a fuse screwed in... having not see the supply i spent hours trying to duplicate the set-up thinking the power was supplied by the fuse
 
Is this thread for engineers or electricians? Or is the difference part of the point?



  • How old were you when you understood what a switch was?

Obviously nearly everyone alive knew what a light switch looked like by the time they could talk. But to the point, I guess, I can't remember not intuitively understanding what one did internally.


  • A contactor or relay ?

Mid 20s, doing hobby stuff, not professional.


  • DIfference between parallel and series connections.

I think I had a basic, weak grasp of it by my teens. Fixing Christmas lights. But it got real solid when I started doing solar in my late 20s.


  • An SCR ?

Today. Had to google it.


  • A VFD?

In the past couple years from browsing this forum. Don't have to deal with them professionally.


  • How a delta-wye transformer works?

Do I even really understand the physics and math now? Not really. But I've understood what it does since my early 30s. I could specify one for the applications I work on.


  • High voltage

Define. ;) I guess I somehow knew in elementary school that AA batteries and model train tracks are safe and outlets not so much. I learned to arc-weld in college so by the first time a small accident happened working in theater I was not so surprised by the effect. It wasn't until after joining this forum that I came to a full understanding of the range of voltages that human beings build stuff for. Maybe asking about Ohms law would be a better way to get at the question. Again, mid-late 20s there for me, although I think we studied it in high-school briefly.
 
asking about Ohms law

good comment

Best I recall was about the same time as SCR, as the same family friend who loaned me a SCR to 'play with' was also the guy who taught me ohms law, about same time he loaned me the SCR (only use it with a 6 V battery he says, and I want it back next week or something like that). Guy had a commercial electronic repair business, repaired the comm equipment and radar at the local airport. Also gave me my first set of needlenose pliers and diag cutters that had some damage, even recall they were Klein. Still have the needlenose somewhere.

He had his shop wired with relays controlling the lights, may have been RR3? Remembered those when I built my house in 1971, used RR3, not sure when those were invented. .
 
181223-1944 EST

By the time I was 6 I started to have a lot of exposure to electrical, mechanical, and chemical things. At home we had two radios, power tools, 110 and 220, printing equipment, and a metal lathe.

Then when I was almost 6 had contact with everything around Greenfield Village, and Henry Ford Museum. This meant horses, barns, secret passage ways, working and non-working steam engines, dynamos in various stages, vacuum pumps using mercury, telegraph equipment, the electric pen, galvanometer, resistor boxes, light bulbs, all kinds of old electric and radio things, the aircraft radio beacon, parabolic acoustic reflectors, sensitive chemical balances with adjustable chain, electric instruments, rotating static electric generators, arc lamps with very heavy cables and their own power plant on a truck, radio broadcast facilities, etc.

In the dark museum Kenneth Litogot and I would shuffle our shoes on the wool rug and spark each other or the metal frames of the seats. We would also go up and look at the 35 mm arc light projectors.

When I was just 6 my father was taking a broadcast course at WJR in Detroit. By this time I was well aware that water was conductive. My dad took me along on one of the field trips to the 50 kW WJR transmitter site downriver from detroit. I was amazed when we were told the transmitter tubes were water cooled. How could this be when water was conductive? I learned there that they used distilled water which for their purposes was essentially a non-conductor. So certainly before this I was warned about electrical equipment and water. Today pure water is very much less conductive than ordinary distilled water. This very pure water is required in the manufacture of semiconductor devices.

My real start learning about electricity was a course in radio circuitry that both my dad and I attended as a night class when I was 10. By 15 I had access to a 3" scope and audio oscillator. I could hear up to about 21 kHz at that time. Scopes were relatively rare at that time. When I was 21, summer 1952, and on active duty in the USNR in Brooklyn I made a point contact transistor from a 1N34 diode in my YMCA room. From this I made an oscillator.

Lots of old memories from the old days. I met and heard discussions by the last living person to have been present when Edison made and tested his first successful light bulb, Francis Jehl.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Jehl

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I got an Erector Set for Christmas on my 8th birthday. It had a little 9VDC battery powered motor and an open knife switch to turn it on and off. To me, even back then, the entire Erector Set was a pile of useless steel without the motor to make it do something... which likely explains why I am in motor control 54 years later.

I didn't learn about power electronics until college, and even then it was very sketchy; I had bad teachers at first and everything was about the math involved, very little about the physics that made it all possible. I went down to Radio Shack and bought a book on electronics; that was a GREAT book, explained everything I was confused about in very easy to understand terms and very little math. I wish I still had it but I loaned it out to someone and never got it back. It's available on Amazon though.

Even after I understood power electronics from a component standpoint, VFDs eluded me because of a general lack of exposure. After getting my EET, I went into PLCs more than power. But through a succession of "forced" job changes, I ended up responsible for applying VFDs because I had been "around" them (via my PLC work) which was more than anyone else, so I inherited responsibility for them in my company. I was lucky enough to have a really good regional manager for what at the time was Asea drives (right as they were merging with Brown Boveri to become ABB) and he spent a week with me going over EXACTLY what was going on inside of those boxes. That has stuck with me to this day and I have been paying it forward ever since.
 
181223-2413 EST

Jraef:

By any chance was Marlin P. Ristenbatt one of the authors of the book you referenced? A book Transistor Physics and Circuits is dated 1964, and coauthored with Robert L. Riddle of Penn State. Found one with an earlier date of 1958 which makes more sense. 1964 is probably a revised edition.

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Getting Started In Electronics

Getting Started In Electronics

Well, I managed to hang on to my Radio Shack (Archer) Book. From 1983. Forrest M. Mims II

Is this the one you had? Cover is good and dirty, pages are very yellow.

ArcherCvr.jpgArcherInCvr.jpgArcherPg80.jpg

Forrest was a prolific writer at the time as I can recall studying many of his books.

The illustrations in this book were fantastic for the time, made it easy peasy to get the big picture, instantly.

As a 7th grader, I was so into studying electronics, that when science class came around to electronics, I got to bring in my toys and teach for the day.

Right around that time, I changed my first service fuse panel. Grew up in a tiny house, in South Dearborn, MI, under the smoke stacks of the Ford Rouge Plant.

House had a two circuit fuse panel, one circuit for each half of the house, and mom was always blowing fuses when she ran laundry and did ironing. I scavenged a six circuit fuse panel, from a upper and lower flat that was being demolished. Then I just had to convince mom that I was capable of putting it in without burning down the house. Actually it would prevent dad form burning down the house, when he would insert a penny behind the fuse, cause there were no spares on hand.

Pulled the meter and got it done. Then got with the landlord to run a circuit over to the laundry machines in the kitchen.
It amazes me today, to think that she trusted me to do it. She was no pushover, but I bugged the schnot out of her, until she relented.

Hometown tidbit : Square D, stands for Detroit. Detroit Fuse and Manufacturing, The First metal enclosed disconnect 1909. Sparky's would ask for the enclosed disconnect with the cover embossed with a square around the D. In 1917 they formally adopted the Corporate name they had become famous for.

More minutia can be found HERE

MTW
 
I just checked and my book logs show I have the same book in my barrels in Jamaica... one of about ten barrels and fifteen boxes of books..lol... Took me thirty sheets of paper just to list my books for customs when I shipped stuff to my home in Ja. 3 Boxes of Romance books for the wife, ten radio kits part built, etc... lol...
Sheet shows I have two cases of wire nuts there... but does not list sizes... hmmm... Making a note of that for when I go back down...
 
181224-1001 EST

A grid controlled rectifier is a thyratron. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thyratron .

In work on a capacitor discharge ignition system in 1955-56 I used a thyratron as a switch to discharge the capacitor to a transformer primary. Then in 1956-57 moved on to an open air spark initiated arc discharge as the switch. By December of 1957 the 1958 recession had started and cars were piling up in storage lots. Our contract was cancelled and I went to work on a military contract relative to secure communication, pseudo random sequences.

The ignitron is another controlled rectifier. Basically a cold cathode controlled rectifier.

An interesting early patent, but not for an ignitron is https://patents.google.com/patent/US1814851A/en
Google has become much poorer at finding what one is searching for. When I go searching for some specific item via Google there are many interesting side paths that show up.
This is one https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=877835 .

What I am looking for is basically the history of the ignitron and what I want is not showing up.

So from my memory of years ago, late 1950s, a patent attorney told me about the ignitron. Its invention, late 20s or early 30s was by Westinghouse (not Westinghouse but an employee) and that under the existing laws by using amendments the patent was kept effective for some 30 years. The patent laws have changed and that is not possible anymore. Can't find that basic patent via Google with search strings I have tried.

Starting in the mid 1960s the SCR started to replace the ignitron in welding equipment. I have a number of ignitrons from that period, and also a high current SCR and its capacitor bank used for drawn arc stud welding. Also a drawn arc stud welding gun.

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As a youngster, my father and I played around with basic circuits (knife switches, series/parallel with flashlight bulbs, etc.) It was only a few years ago that I really realized how difficult switches can be when I designed one for work (ZigBee controlled, two processors, 10 years battery lifetime); I spent too much time thinking that they were two pieces of metal with something to push them together...

I remember projects to build relays (and motors) from some of the "Boy's Electrical Projects" type of books. I probably learned about SCRs around 10 or so from articles in Popular Electronics. VFDs took more understanding of how triodes worked until I realized that they were just triodes whose plates lit up (yes, I know... I figured out that type of VFD way before the variable frequency drive). High Voltage I figured out when I discovered that damp ceramic tiles on our terrace were great at conducting the output of a Ford coil. Inductive kickback from buzzers also helped with that.

Unfortunately, I don't think most kids get such a practical experience (electrical or mechanical) these days.
/mike
 
n1ist said:
As a youngster........

Unfortunately, I don't think most kids get such a practical experience (electrical or mechanical) these days.
/mike
Click to expand...

Good point, too many regulations these days:

At Christmas dinner yesterday teenage grandson said to us (both grandfathers present) as we recounted some of the 'explosive chemical' experiments done in the 50's as kids:

"if you did that as kids now, you would both be in jail"

Electrically, I even recall , AS a high school science project, one classmate building a 'time bomb' with and old alarm clock hooked to switch and battery and flashbulb igniter in fffg.
 
181227-1003 EST

When I was young the overhead power lines behind the house were three phase delta. Probably installed about 1920. We had a 50 A service with 220 (it was 220 in those days). Today in a different location I still have 3 phase delta on the pole. Mow my 110 is more like 124.

There were still ignition coils with a vibrator one could play with. I read about spinning disk TVs with 60 line resolution. We rolled balls of mercury around on the basement floor. Then there were also discussions about positive altitude altimeters, in a sense a forerunner of radar.

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And don't tell your kids or grandkids or the POCOs, but kids used to make bolos out of a few feet of 20g iron or copper wire with anything on the ends for weights and throw them at an uninsulated 3 phase power line.

Some nice fireworks when the bolo wires were vaporized. Great fun, probably arrested now as terrorist trying to shut down the power grid.
 
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