1930's Electronics - Will It Still Work? Lets Find Out! 

To learn electronics in a very different and effective way, and gain access to Mr Carlson's personal designs and inventions, visit the Mr Carlson's Lab Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/MrCarlsonsLab

Kind of OT. I am deaf. I hear only with the help of a cochlear implant and it's not a 100% thing. I wanted to let you know from my standpoint how appreciative I am of how clear your speech is. The moderate speed and great annunciation is so wonderful. Together with the excellent audio quality of your vids, I can give you a "599" report and relax, listening without the closed captioning. No one who is not deaf could ever comprehend how this little detail makes the world of difference to me. Many thanks, M.C. - Tom

I can still hear my Lab Chief back in the 90s: “Turn down the intensity, you’re going to burn the phosphor!” Of course none of us technicians ever did.

i love that Mr Carlson is doing his best to pass his knowledge to future generations to keep this tech alive. keep up the good work

You are what they call "a Legend of youtube" bro keep up the amazing content! From South Africa

“It lives when it leaves” You have the name of your auto-biography. Or a new horror movie, one or the other.

Never gets old watching these things come back into service. That scope in particular would be an awesome teaching tool as well. No "Auto" button here! 👍

My dad had one of those and I'm almost 70....

Nice! This is in such beautiful shape! You’d ne er think it is that old.

So excited! I've been checking back almost daily for the past two weeks for the next video. Your content is excellent and very, very appreciated. Thank you for everything you do to further the industry and to give back to those who are just beginning/tinkering.

1930. 91 years old and...(even if serviced in 47, one month before the birth of my Dad lol) and it's working !!! Surely they knew how to design and build things back in the day !!!!! Another great video Paul, so perfect and inspiring to start my electronic week 😁

When a teenager I mistakenly touched the capacitor on top on one of those old globe tube radios. The older the radio looked the more I wanted it. My bedroom had a bunch of old time radio circuit boards. Some would run but others not. The capacitor shook the muscle on the back of my arms. This was in the early 60's. Wish I had those radios today.

All that history...great project. I was an Electronic Engineer for 18 years in England. I really enjoy watching your methodical approach to your fault finding. Reminds me of me 😂

As usual, like a doctor examining the patient. Mr. C seems like he's in an especially good mood for this video. Nice to see.

As someone who knew little and less about electronics, I love watching your videos - thank you so much! And I love looking at all the old electronic equipment too!

It never ceases to amaze me HOW much can be done with so few "valves" or tubes as you call them. I LOVE valve stuff, memories of WW2.

Watch makers/repair put papers inside the watch cases with dates of cleaning or repairs. Later they scratched the same info onto the inside of the watch cases. Looking forward to this rebuild, Paul.

I love the way you describe things in a way anyone can understand. I love your videos. It's like listening to my mentor back when I did my apprenticeship 30 years ago

the master of electronics is back with another great video

I presume Mr Hewlett and Mr Packard were still at school when this was on sale

You gotta love that old testing equipment. Great video!

It's Feb 28th 2024, that kit over 90 years old. Amazing, well made simple as and long lasting. Sir thank you 🙏 your content is mesmerising

Great video on a great channel!! I just discovered you about 3 weeks ago. I've binge watched about 20 videos on a 50" TV screen. My wife calls you the "boring capacitor man", but I Love it!!! I was a Navy Radar Technician in the mid 1960s and post Navy, worked as a computer engineer for RCA (at Harrison, NJ) , Univac, and finally GE. Although I retired 21-years ago from GE, and am now in my 70s, your youtube channel has awakened a desire to restore some old vacuum tube test equipment...... As a young boy I used to play in the woods behind the Allen B. Dumont Labs on Bloomfield Ave in Clifton/Passaic, NJ. and today's video really hit home!!! BTW. Allen B Dumont, in 1932 in NJ was the inventor of the 'Magic Eye Tube' as well as a pioneer in Radar. Keep up the good work, I'll be binge-ing on more videos in the coming weeks. Bob

I bought one of these in an antique mart in Florida maybe a decade ago. Hooked a wire to the back allowing it to trace, and it worked with no effort. Sold it off on eBay for about what I bought it for, as to not collect too many items. Regret selling that one ... was an interesting find.

Thank you for re-awaking my love for electronics. Great channel!!

Professor Carlson does it again with another great video. Great seeing this old testing equipment come to life. Many thanks !!

Astounding how such tech came into being a relatively short time after electricity was discovered and put to use.

Given as a gift. A Toledo duck crystal radio w/ Sylvania diode along side a Galina diode. It's 100 years old and used it to listen to a foot ball game recent. The ham was very elderly. And asked me to take care of his "rig" in the mid 90s. It's now 2021 and still running. To day. De kv4li 73

My Dad had one of these and I still have it. Growing up my Dad used to work on all types of electronic equipment down our basement. Car radio's, tabletop radio's, phonograph, TV's etc. I used to watch him and learned how to repair everything at 7 years-old and now I am 58 years-old.

Absolutely love the glow of those filaments. They just warm my soul.

It looks like the old oscilloscope and I are both doing pretty well since we both came to be in 1933.

Great motto - "If it's dead when it comes, it lives when it leaves!" Wish I'd thought of it back when I was fixin' for a livin'. Hope to build your capacitor checker soon. Thanks for the fine presentations!

Fascinating detective work Mr. Carlson. From decades ago the story emerges.

These videos are amazing! Thank you so much Mr. Carlson.

Just wanted to echo all of the positive accolades of fellow followers and add that I love your pride in craftsmanship attitude that you impart. It's refreshing to see no matter what vocation it's coming from. Thanks!

thumbing through Mr. Carlson's videos and found this gem! this is awesome

Saw that in a 1930's SciFi movie.... :)

Re old equipment: I can't tell you how many times I've found it was operator error. I started a new job in 1997 and as I was being shown around for the first time, the guy I was replacing mentioned, "oh, that's broken, that doesn't work... been meaning to send that out for repair, etc" to at least 10 different pieces of gear. In the months that followed I could not find one piece of equipment that was damaged or defective in the slightest. It was all operator error by a guy who just never bothered trying to find out how to work the gear in the first place.

BEAUTIFUL! Simply BEAUTIFUL Paul! Looking forward to getting my EICO 460 up and running soon. You ARE "The Tube Master"! Patrick

Mr. Carlson is spoiling us. That radio restoration....now this. I usually give a like as soon as the video starts.... Mr. Carlson never disappointed!

I am glad you posted a new video, I was watching old reruns of yours from 5 years ago while waiting for a new one. Good to see you are still bringing these old marvels back to life!

17:06 that is precisely why I go for older stuff whenever it's practical for me to do so. For all its inefficiencies and bulkiness the old stuff will just never die. It will usually still function and even if it's malfunctioning it can be easily and quickly repaired, unlike modern stuff that's just 'discard and replace'. My electricity is hydroelectric/nuclear anyway so I don't have carbon worries either. Win Win really.

This thing puts the "tube" in RU-vid :)

Real fascinating to see this old equipment come to live again !well done Sir

That looks almost exactly like the one I had when I was 14 !!! That was in 1967 and it was given to me by a bell telephone service guy. And yes... it worked.

You are so right.... Mr Carlson If you can't fix........it's not Broken So awesome to watch you

This piece was clearly loved through it's time. -GOOD! It's supposed should be like that. :D Thank you much for showing the story. The history is part of it...and that old flux. Can't get that enough of that... So clean! Beautiful. Thank you Mr. Carlson!

That's awesome. I just bought an old Hameg HM 112 / 312-6 scope , replaced all caps, repaired some small defects and it's working! Great machine from 1976.

Always a joy to listen and watch your videos! I sometimes put on one of your longer videos to fall asleep to.

to see the hand writing the same in the writing of repair dates from the 40s to the 60s shows it was the same prepair person or owner.. crazy to think about

Mr. Rogers is the best. Thank you.

Now I can't wait to tear into my WO-33C. Thanks for the inspiration, Mr. C.

Great video! Your name was mentioned by Grant Wyness on soldering smds. He spoke very highly of you and your capacitor tester! I also saw your name mentioned on Antique electronic supplies website. (positively) Thank you for all your service and thank you. I will look into building one of these in the future. Good luck. I can't wait for a follow up on this!

Them: 1930s Electronics- Will it Work? Me: Only if Mr. Carlson gets ahold of it.

Holy cow! 80 years old and that thing still has sync. That's amazing. The oldest I've ever used was what my engineering professors called "Stanley Steamer" Textronics scopes on those big carts that we still used in our college labs in the 80's.

Thank you! I always enjoy your chats. I was lucky enough to have a dad, who would build Heathkits to get equipment. I got involved as the oldest. One voltmeter - swipe dial - tube I think was my go to as I learned. Switch circuits and voltage scale, were easy to see and understand. A full scale would only tap the needle. These last 20 or 30 yrs with the DMM's. Most do not understand that the time delay to read the issue may fry the boards inside before you ever know to stop. Looking forward to the build! Cheers Mr C.

Paul, As always, another excellent video from you! I always appreciate the thoroughness with which you go through the details of all the important things that need to be considered and aware of in working with the older vacuum tube equipment. I also am amazed at how well this thing worked without doing anything to it. The thinness of the line, the brightness of the CRT, other than the bent chassis and the discoloration and missing handle on the outside, this rig is in amazingly fine shape. Really looking forward to the restoration on this one...and also eager to see more on the BC348 receiver!!!

Thank you for posting.

Each time I watch one of your videos, I'm always very impressed with the expression of your knowledge and skill. It has obviously taken you many years to acquire this. Keep up the good work.

Thath old Scope 😎 Real nice, hardly any new will last 1/2 as long.

It's nice to see some of these things in person. I worked for an electronics supply company about 30 years ago and it was my job to look through schematic books and find part numbers for people and either find them in stock or order them for customers. SO I've had extensive use of schematics. We also sold the schematics to a lot of old electronics.

That was so cool to see it come to live, thanks for sharing.

Mr Carlsons lab your Electronics from the 1930s is cool 😎 👌 👍

Got some linearity problems, but nothing new caps wont fix. Kinda amazing that it just fired up like that.

To Carlson I was watching your video about your restoration on 1938 De forest 7D832 radio it was very interesting the radio is handsome I am a collector of pre-war radio’s one of my favourites is a pye type mm made in the early 1930s that Cambridge in the uk . We had one in school . My mother use to work at pye

Awsome man, thank you for spread out you valuable knowledge.

Geat audio! Great video! Thank you so much.

It just goes to show you just because something is old doesn't mean it can't be useful. Thanks for sharing Paul.

I've learnt more about Vacuum Tubes and the technology from Mr. Carlson than I did from my actual electronics class teacher. Dang.

You know, when you get one of those ah ha moments! EPR! Duh! It seems that I have always had a quasi understanding of capacitor failure modes! Apart from a shorted capacitor, DC leakage was the other and possibly the main reason why equipment fails! I have always been concerned with capacitor leakage but I still see plenty of people on RU-vid that will simply put an ESR meter across the capacitor and say, oh! It's still good and yet it's capacity is making it look like an overachiever! This to me screams a problem with EPR, due to the DC leakage it's taking longer to charge the capacitor giving the impression that it now mysteriously has created more capacity in its current space time relationship LoL... No! It's bad and it has to go! Having extra DC on top of an AC signal will saturate the next component in line, it only takes a tiny bit of DC on top of AC for this effect to occur. I have read an article from the early years and they were well aware of this issue back then, the article was about how manufacturers of TV's wanted to ditch the power transformer and just go with half wave rectified supply but Australia blocked it because the electrical system used the galvanized plumbing as the neutral and the pipes would corrode in 3 months... So basically, it's not a new problem, it's been around for a very long time, and the lack of understanding of the problem is still with us today... Maybe you should put your marvelous LCR Bridge into the spotlight alongside your EPR meter and show people what you really mean about EPR... Besides, I'm dying to see it being used! I never knew that such a device existed and it's been right there hiding behind you! Maybe we can get to see it in action in the restoration video? (Please 🙏)

Excellent and interesting! My humble thanks.

Hi Mr Carlson's Lab Inspirational. Due to your videos and a bit of lock down (sigh) in the last 6 months. You have inspired me to pick up my electronics and start doing electronics again. The result is repaired 1 battery radio receiver. 3 mains valve radios, 1 solid state transceiver and assorted other electronics on the shelf to be worked on. Purchased 1 de-soldering machine, how on earth did I ever manage without one of these. In the last month decided to get my HAM radio exams out of the way. Then I will be off to Patreon, I must have one of your capacitor testers and your no contact probe, that will save a lot of time. Sincere thanks to your self and your brilliant videos. Oh and in reference to one of your older videos, hysteresis (his-ter-ee-sis)

1930 electronics works flawlessly My 2018 i phone dies 2 years later and near unrepairable.

Your electronic inventions is absolutely in genius

Great video as usual. Thank you. Looking forward to the full restoration video.

I have an Allen-Dumont 304-H and for its years it is functioning very well... They were leaders for this market before the advent of Tektronics ;)

Dumont goes way back, I used to work on some of the TV's they made and they were built like tanks! I have an old Eico scope and is similar to this one. I haven't used it for a while and this gave me the want to get it out and see if it still works . I recapped it back in the early 2000's and it was a good general purpose scope!

Crazy to think my long deceased dad was four years old when this was made. What a handsome device. I guess they used one of these to make the thirties version of Frankenstein!

My first personal scope in 1979 was a Dumont oscillograph. There is a sync function, not a trigger. I paid $50. At work in the lab they had Tec 465s. The Dumont was not as useful as it was fun to operate.

You are a Genius !!!!!!!!!

I love this old equipment.

There are chances that making some wav files of the initial "Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Mr. Carlson's Lab" from some different videos they can be binary matched. Love it. Thanks Paul, I'm learning a lot from your videos, here and from Patreon. My lab is growing well thank to your inventions. Great respect! (Sorry for english mistakes, if any). Go, go, go!!!

Oh man! I love this scope! And you are more than right - there is so much successful and meaningful work one can do today with it, most people just don't imagine. Not having a calibrated grid and sweep, nor markers, does not rob you of the capability to "see" the voltage. Anyway, these days its not hard at all to give this scope a small companion - a time and voltage calibration box, which would allow one to calibrate the screen before measuring. Great piece, and I cannot wait to see it shine after your hands do their magic. All the best! Bill

Very good! Fantastic Equipment!

Discovering the story is the best part of digging in to any old thing. I've discovered quite some stories hidden in my bus.

Very clean and unmolested inside, great to see. I was pleasantly surprised to see it fire up and function. Not only built to last (a bit cliche) but built to be serviceable - even if that's on the kitchen table.

I always enjoy your content. I'm a long time viewer . Keep up the good work.😁

I love it. Thank you for a truly interesting video. I really appreciate what you do.

Good afternoon Mister Marvelous item !!! and fantastic construction !!! what the difference with today .... Good job and explications thanks for the share Eric from France

Mr. C. Thank You !

Many many years ago, I threw together a Heathkit oscilloscope. However, it came with a solder supply, but whatever it was, it did not have the usual flux. Whatever it had, it literally ate away the PCB's, each beyond repair. Years later, I threw together a Heathkit Hero 2000. This time I used my own supply of solder. My 1986 Hero 2000 is still working to this day. Although there was a flaw in the motor control board. When in sleep mode, the main +5Vdc was shut down, but a sleep mode +5 Vdc was still active for basic functions. But that sleep mode +5 Vdc was not connected to all of the the motor control board IC's. So the IC's that were used to connect the motors to +12 Vdc and GND or vice versa, to determine the direction each motor was running, now had no +5 Vdc supply. But they worked, most of the time. The signals fed to these IC's had now become the power supply by providing current to the IC through the input protection diodes. But when it failed, the whole motor control board went up in smoke due to the +12 Vdc line now being connected to the GND, rather the path being through a motor. I managed to fix the board by replacing the damaged parts, twice.Once finding the cause of all this, I informed Heathkit of this problem, and so they kindly sent me a new assembled motor control board, for free.

A beautiful piece of engineering. Can't believe it just worked after nearly 90 years!

Nice one Mr.C..Great how she worked right off the bat. Love your explanations & tips...Thank you for sharing..Ed..U.K..😀

Fuse was replaced on the day I was born. I think mine is overdue as well.

Hey Paul. You almost seemed disappointed it worked as well as it did😉... definitely back then things were built to last. Looking forward for the next one! Take care too. Cheers

It's amazing that it's sensitive enough to measure your bodies electrical output. WoW.

Greetings from Port-au-Prince, Haiti! Thank you for another informative and entertaining video.

great video. I like the old test equipment also.

I am building your test tools, and conserving / upgrading vintage British equipment. E.G. Cossor 1039M or CT52 miniature O'scopes. I find that some upgrades are required in order to make them useful for low voltage testing: swap the Y amplifier valve for a more modern high slope RF Pentode to increase gain and bandwidth: remove diode valves and selenium diodes and replace with silicon, then adjust load resistors to compensate for the changed voltage: add a sync amplifier: add a HT surge suppressor to keep HT voltage under 400 V. Or alternatively make any power switch on the instrument switch HT on/off to permit first powering the valve heaters when powering from the mains.

Excellent educative video as always. One question: When you hooked up the signal generator it looks like the scope is not sweeping the horizontal linearly. Is that correct and how they worked?