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Wayback Wednesday sounds interesting :D

True - TTL just did not catch on in the USA till the turn of the 70's and the emergence of the early micros - DTL and RTL were too trusted and intrenched for designers to change. I do think that the plastic packages they describe in the '66 article would have been circular not rectangular - the first inline packages would have been the flat packs, the predecessors to the DIP package.

15:37 Unless I'm very much mistaken, that picture at the bottom right is the EDSAC computer from the 1950s which is currently being rebuilt in Bletchley Park, England. Love the video! I'm a bit of a nostalgic nerd so I would welcome #WayBackWednesday as a regular thing.

Yes, you should finish it: That chip is the equivalent of the first advert for the Audion.

The editorial at 21:58 about concerns over privacy is an interesting read.

this is new favourite segment, do more, please, now.

Awesome! I have scanned tons of U.S. electronics magazines from the 60s and 70s. Scanning took forever because I would get sucked in and start reading the darn things instead of scanning! you rock!

I love going thru old electronic magazines when I can find some, and you're right about the adverts sometime being more interesting than the articles. That's a vote for Wayback Wednesday by the way.

Here in Uruguay we had Popular Mechanics (or how it was translated/renamed here "Mecanica Popular"), those magazines were the BEST method to know what the hell was going on in the world, I still have some 40 to 48 (or more) magazines in almost perfect condition that are from 1971 to 1978 (I borrowed them from my grampa)... in that era the Atari Video Computer System was waiting for the FCC approval, the Fairchild Channel F system was a brand new (and revolutionary) gaming machine, and the Japanese Engineers were trying to build an six engines hydroplane for 1500 passegers (was obviously canceled but damn... that plane was like an Airbus A380... futuristic as fu**). So many memories... but as for an exclusive electronic magazine I never saw one. :( By the way, this "Wayback" segment should have the "Back in Time" music on the intro... or something related to Back to the Future... you know... for science! But yeah, MORE WAYBACK dammit! I want to see how electronics were in 1885.

#WayBackWednesday

Nice archiving of the magazines by the previous owner, really cool to see those old issues. I got rid of the few issues of Radio Electronics and my entire collection of Circuit Cellar quite a few years ago. Circuit Cellar in particular was a great resource for me. I still have most of them on USB in digital form but donated mine to someone who was anxious to read them all.

8:05 The 'yellowing' of the paper is actually yellow ink that was printed as a background.

22:00 That is a rather prophetic editorial by Neville Williams about "Big Brother".

I have some TTL chips dated 1967 made by TI. (yes, they still work! I tested them). They are in plastic DIPs.

Absolutely Dave. I would love to see more videos relating to this vintage era.I was drooling looking through the vintage electronics magazines. Especially the ads. It was really cool to see your project in there!Tom

I think Fundamentals Friday is more important than Wayback Wednesday. So, I think you should spend more time on that.

I voted for Way-Back Wednesday the first time Dave suggested it, and I'll vote for it again now. Great stuff.

oh what a decent old stuff. I love it. please share more of that great vintage stuff with us! :) I remember the smell of the very old magazines. Your comment on that make me smile.

My dad worked on SILIAC at Sydney University waaay back in the day - apparently they had to replace failed valves at all times of the day and night so they developed some cool debugging stuff - including hanging capacitors off the clocks to slow it down to a crawl, hooking loudspeakers up to various lines so they could do quick "audio diagnosis" and so on..

Ah... neon logic... The lovely glow of the cold cathode thyraton tube. :D Someone has a really amazing clock made using neon lamps as counters. The 1961 ANITA calculator used 4 lead thyratron tubes and a pair of dekatron ring counters to build the first commercially available desktop electronic calculator. If you carefully match them, you can use 2 lead neon lamps for switching, by having your high and low switching passed the turn on and shut off voltages, taking advantage of the hysteresis that inherently exists. To turn on a neon lamp, you must surpass the breakdown voltage and current, to get the initial flow of electricity across the gap between the anode and cathode. Once that flow starts though, the gas between remains ionized, and this keeps the flow alive, even if the voltage and current drop below the starting values. The ionized gas keeps the flow alive till you drop below a minimum threshold. You can build counters out of this type of circuit, and do all sorts of fun things!

Hell yeah, we want more.

Thank you very much for the trip down memory lane. I am about the same age as you and also grew up perusing and reading my grandfather's old issues of (U.S.) electronics magazines from the 40's through 70's during the 80's when I got into electronics as a pre-teen and teen. I would love to see more of these episodes if you enjoy making them as it brings back many fond memories of a time when it seemed like almost anything you could dream of was, or soon would be, possible with that boundless optimism of youth!

The first project I ever saw that had TTL chips was an issue of Popular Science (I still have and was able to find the magazine) in June, 1972 ("Time Cube - A Unique Digital Clock You Can Make" by William J. Hawkins). The clock used two Nixie tubes to display the time, and you would press the top and it would cycle through the hours, minutes, and seconds. I remember seeing this as a kid and was absolutely fascinated by how it worked. The same issue had an article titled "Plate Tectonics - A Startling New View of Our Turbulent Earth." Good stuff. Still have a few of those old DTL chips (got them in a pile of "junk parts" my uncle gave to me in the late '70s - mostly working stuff!). Good times.

Great video! I'd love to see this become a regular segment

That takes me back, wish I'd kept my old electronic magazine's & books now, great video.

i like anytime i get to view more material from you dave. wacky Wednesday, wired wednesday, wednesday weirdness... whatever you call it, i will gladly watch and enjoy! thanks again for all the great content dave!

Very interesting video Dave. I would very much like to see more like this. I think it puts into context modern hardware, showing how it originated and evolved.

Love the idea of WBW being an avid reader of vintage English electronics magazines. Am currently reading contemporary articles on the implementation of HDTV circa 89. Good stuff.

Fantastic! Please continue the segment!

I was designing with Emitter Coupled Logic ECL (MECL 1000 seris from Motorola) in 1967 I seem to remember that TTL came 2-3 years later and was very slow. It was noisy as well compared to ECL and injected noise in to the power rails whereas ECL was long-tailed pair so power was balanced as it switched in 4ns TTL was 10ns +. We were building a new computer in UK using ECL and some of the MECL chips/gates were designed to our request. ECL was first in round 8 pin then late 67 to duel in line. The other thing was that the early TTL chips seemed to last only 3-4 years this was partly due to air entering via the pins and thermal breaking of the internal wiring from chip to IC legs.

Yeah. Please continue with the "Wayback Wednesday"! And maybe have a vintage mailbag to go along with it? Like vintage components and products and magazines!

Please continue this way back Wednesday segment!! It would be so interesting to see how things have changed and how they influenced what we have today!

12:30 - "Bulky... solid...I think they used to call them 'transistor units' - Montgomery Scott from 'Space Seed' :)

Hi Dave, Can I put a vote to finish this one off. The talk rambled a bit, however there are so many delicious distractions in the magazines it must have been very difficult to bypass them all. Your approach I reckoned is what I would have done if I was flicking through, so I understand. Can I also suggest that the first mention of the venerable LM555 and LM741 should also be tracked as well. Both of these chips were about where I came into EA and became bread and butter chips for many magazine circuits and my own designs. I seriously began my electronics as a hobby by haunting the electronics disposals shop in Elizabeth St Melbourne for cheap components (the eBay of its day?). My first project was a multivibrator using disposal glass encased germanium transistors c:1972. Still have a few! Anyway keep your site going, it is great to put it on when the wife is working, haha. Love it.

I love the mention of Expo '67 in Montreal! My grandparents took my dad and his four brothers to Expo '67 in Montreal... got tons of pictures of them looking around! Very cool.

Ahhhh nostalgia!!! Wonderful episode. Never mind how it ended. Super great fun to watch :-)

I fell asleep during his video about the solar roads, woke up to this, was confused as hell

I could look at old ads all day long. I love old tech magazines.

Definitely bring back Wayback Wednesday as a regular segment, I like it even more than Mailbag!

Wayback Wednesday would be a really cool segment!

Great video, Dave! Keep 'em coming! The "Way Back Wednesday" concept is an awesome idea, please keep it going. Fascinating look back into the dawn of ICs. I had no idea that there were DIP ICs in the mid 1960s, I had been under the mistaken impression that they had come about sometime around 1970. Thanks for correcting me! :)

This series looks like it would be fun,,,,, especially since I'm an old fart and like this stuff. Thanks Dave. Carl

Way back wednesday sounds like an awesome idea!

3:17 - 3:18 boxes on the background left magically moved! :)

WayBack Wednesday "BIG THUMBS UP" and please finish this video. I love to see old tech and ads too ...kinda gives a good perspective on where we were and how far ...so far.. weve come.... from reel to reel tape ...fast forward... mp3 players you can put in your pocket THANKS DAVE

I built synthesizers back then and kept magazine articles relating to thier design. Earliest I have here is an article on using logic circuits from early 1970. It definitely mentions RTL, DTL and TTL chips and gives examples of circuits. I'm in UK by the way

@26:15 - sounds like ECL. I have Gernsback editions going back to around '63. Will go through them to see what the earliest 74xx mention is and let you know. I once stripped down (in hindsight I regret it, but 25 years ago it was just an old albeit working bit of surplus junk I paid $5 for) a late 60's early 70's Panasonic Nixie deskktop calculator that had neon decoding logic. It was also populated with single inline "IC's" that looked like orange drop caps. Never did identify the family.

Fundamental Friday is my no 1 segment, but I really vote for more Way back Wednesday!

Going through my PDF archive of Popular Electronics magazine, the first time I even see a mention of the term 'TTL' is in a February 1970 article that mentions something called "UTILOGIC" and also 'DTL' gates. From 1967 to 1970 all the projects are RTL using Motorola's MC7's and Fairchild's uL9's. Radio Shack's archive shows RTL''s available to buy in 1968 and TTL's in 1969.

Fantastic stuff Dave, I really liked this new section

Hi Dave, I have to be honest with you. I found this video really interesting. It surprises and scares me how fare we really have come in a relatively short space of time. Even over the last 20 years things have changed so dramatically. Thanks for the video and keep up the good work :)

Very enjoyable Dave, I'd like to see more like this. For anyone who's interested, the Internet Archive has lots of scans of old computer magazines and manuals, and I guess there would be lots of electronics mags on there too. Although it's not quite the same when you can't smell the old pages.

I really enjoyed the history lesson. It would be really nice to see more of these, maybe once a month?

Well Dave, that was one of the most interesting video's you have ever done!! Do you think you could start doing some stuff like this now please. Better than boring equipment reviews on gear the hobbyist cannot afford Thank you

I like it! Finish it, thanks for posting this half. :)

Woah, that photo. Dave is so young! The monitors so square!

Would love more Wayback Wednesday. And scans of the magazines. Oh, how 'mazing it would be to read those old mags.

This is definitely a series i would watch if continued.

At 25:33 I was puzzled by the word "resease" in the text that appeared on screen until I realized that it was a typo and was supposed to say "release". Yes, please finish the video. Lots of fun looking at the old days of Electronics.

the ads are quite interrestjng too, such as the review of the dual 1019 turntable. a lot them are still in use today.

Back in 1974 I started working in electronics for MEL, formerly Mullard Electronics Limited in the UK. While there, I encountered some peculiar objects - Norbits. These were essentially logic circuits constructed from discrete components on a circuit board then potted into a plastic block, like an over-sized dual-in-line package. Considered to be historically interesting even back then, my understanding was that they were still used extensively in things like lift (elevator) control systems. Sadly, there's not a huge amount of information about them available these days but they were definitely a pre-cursor of the logic chips we all came to know and love. As I recall, each one was about 2 inches by 1 inch and weighed around an ounce, so not exactly miniature either. However, an interesting curio these days.

I thought I knew a little about electronics, but I have NFI what you're talking about half the time. But my hope is that I listen to you enough, I will become and electronics master!

Don't forget that we were in the deepest part of the cold war, so while those 5400 series chips were being made, they were not available that much.

I noticed a lot of interesting stuff in one of the issues such as a superconducting magnet, liquid helium and mention of niobium. Stuff like that reminds me of when I was doing some research about particle colliders, such as the LHC and the superconducting magnets it uses although these magazines shown here are way before the LHC.

Love this! I would enjoy more videos like this!

I vote in the affirmative for some more of this :)Oh by the way, there was another magazine around in the 80's called Australian Electronics Monthly, Roger Harrison was the editor I believe. It was pretty darned good too

I love Way Back Wednesdays and classic tech from the old days

According to the Reserve Bank of Australia inflation calculator, 2 Australian shillings and 6 pence in 1964 would be 3.33AUD (or 2.52USD) in 2015. So magazines have gone up in price? I haven't bought one (or even looked at one in a shop) in years.

Learned alot, thanks for sharing.

Beautiful.. I Canada we had Bytemagazine for computers and QST for ham operators like myself. These publications were treasured and read until the ell apart. Keep it up with this format.. Christopher VA3NTH'

Follow-up: Popular Electronics first TTL project appears to be in the March 1970 issue - a Numitron display driver using the SN7490.

Wow CRC 2-26! Saw that advert. Who knew it was around then? I use it everyday today!

This sounds like a great idea! I love old electronics!

"Sherman, to the wayback machine." Obscure childhood reference.

Very interesting will watch for more 'wayback'... BTW I was in USA Military Electronics 1964 to 1970... a very exciting time for me & others.

I'd love to see occasional (few times per year? ) historical segments like this.

re camera and memory cards, this is why the better manuals will tell you to format the card inside camera and not on pc

The magazine that I couldn't miss in the late 70s was ETI - Electronics Today International... from what I can see that was the descendant of these mags... I had no idea.

Cool idea Dave. It would also be cool to add in other info regarding how modern best practice has developed with the advances in tech, e.g. "Why we use J-FETs instead of valves, PCBs instead of tagging," both of which you touched on.

Damn it!! I'll have to go through my Wireless Worlds of that era now, to find out when 74 series was first mentioned there. Wireless World was the serious electronics journal in the UK.

I remember chip chasing TTL cct's when I was an engineer @ Digital... I actually quite liked working with TTL and ECL, made sense.

Yes, very cool. Please finish the story and tell us about your project. Thanks for all you do. Also could you explain more about the different types of logic mentioned... DTL TTL ect...

I love the idea of trip down memory lane.

I would love to see some more Wayback Wednesdays!:-)

To Wayback Wednesday..yeah, we want more... Sincerely Thursday

You gotta love the Z80 too.

While I was watching: $1 in 1967 = about $12 in 2015 (RBA), which is a pretty good price. Oldham Rd in Elizabeth is a right angle from the front of the Holden plant that's about to close down.

Love this stuff, very interesting.

Dave, i ve never really thought about how old the 74xxx logic chips are, amazing if they are 50 years old, wow!!. Ive found them to be a delight to use, a must for simple computer interfaces. The humble 555 timer is as old as the hills too, its lasted because of it usefullness :-D

The oldest I found at home is SN74122N, Texas Instrument, from 1974 (week 24), "only" 42 years old

I found it somewhat interesting that there was an ad for CRC Products in the first magazine you flipped through. Didn't realize CRC had been around for that long doing spray coatings and lubricants (the stuff advertised sounding an awful lot like WD40). But even more surprising to me was the name of the distributor, "EMAIL LIMITED". If only they knew that one day they would be sitting on a gold mine of a name.

Sucked that it ended like that, but I love the idea of regular Wayback Wednesday :)

I remember playing with TTL chips when I was growing up. A friend gave me a pile of chips, a breadboard/psu and a book.

Great stuff Dave! March of '66 was when I was born. :)

Yes please I would like to see some vintage electronics coming from magazines, all the way to germanium transistors !!

Love the video Dave!

Great info i still have some 914 ic's around but could never find the datasheet

Wayback Wednesday sounds awesome! :)

wow, a tad bit before my time, I liked it , I would be open to more

Yes yes yes, please finish it. Just watched the first few minutes but I know I want to see it all :D.