[Boatanchors] Are You An Old-Timer?

[Jack Dunigan]

I found the following article in the November, 1964, issue of CQ written by John P. Stowe, K3TLC

"The term "Old Timer" is a relative one. Ask a hundred people, and you will likely come up with a hundred different definitions. The ffiftieth anniversary of the ARRL has brought to my mind a few things a person should be able to remember if he is to call himself "OT".

Do You Remember

Battery acid on the rugs and curtains...Oatmeal box coil forms...When 5 meters was u.h.f...R9 magazine...Coherers for receiving...BH rectifiers...Knife switches...Variometers and vario-couplers...The 160 meter zepp antenna...A pair of 45's on a breadboard...Copper tubing tank coils...Loop modulation...The SW-3 receiver...Graduating from a BT mike to a double button job...Adjusting the old cat whisker...The loose coupler...Those new screen grid tubes...Plug-in coils...Rotary spark gaps...

"Appliance operators" who bought condensers instead of making them with window glass and tinfoil...The first band-switching receiver...The side-swiper key...W3ENX on 40 with his drummer-boy swing...Using tube bases for plug-in coil forms..."That's the dope on that"...Everybody, but everybody was rock bound...Hashafisti Scratchi...The All Star receiver kit...When FCC was FRC...TOM articles in Cue Street...Scanning-disc television...Telephones without dials...No TVI = no TV...Horn speakers...Early Gil cartoons in Cue Street...That old tape puller in Phila FCC (It was still there the last time we were)...The WD-11, 01-A, 27-A, etc...Magnetic speakers...Those new metal tubes...Bayonet tube sockets.

When the cathode ray tube (Crookes tube) was a laboratory phenomenon with no practical use...Ditto the solenoid...The thrill of hearing somebody calling you for the first time...When there was no SSB...When there was no fone...When  the Call Book was saddle stitched...The pine breadboard with bakelite panel... The three (or more) wire antenna...The first issue of CQ?

Believe me, OT, if you can remember more than half of these items, you're an O'er T than I am, OT."

I admit I don't even know what some of those things are. With the recent discussions on this list about new devices and regulations, I thought it was an interesting look at how things have changed. No doubt they will continue to change. We cannot even imagine what our hobby will be like in 2048.

Jack
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