[Lowfer] ldes' et al

[Ed Phillips]

Peter Barick wrote:
> 
> >>> evp@pacbell.net 09/19/03 10:43AM >>>
> 
> >  Here in California the term scofflaw has no meaning at all.
> Illegal
> 
> Hear ya, Ed. Getting that way around here. I see them filling up the
> police blotter in the paper. I refer to them, as a class of scofflaw
> residents, as " Know Nothings": No license, no registration, no
> insurance, no card, no speak well. Sad our system seems unable or
> unwilling to address these criminal matters, yet darts off attacking
> other wrongs around the globe--and not doing much better there either.
> 
> This may interest you, Ed. Was at a regional hamfest last weekend and
> found an "engineering" book, Radio Theory, by Therman, circa 1938. It
> was in good condition with the usual complexion of age. Thought you
> mentioned this name on this list. Regrettably the book and other items
> came from an estate sale, one of a few others at this just this hamfest,
> by a unknowing family member. But sometimes it is a neighbor ham selling
> a deceased ham's related goods. There are the clues usually: sometimes,
> a box of Bud coils; maybe a collection of WWII era-boxed tubes with
> those VT- numbers or large out-of-band xtals. Whatever it once was, much
> of it is hardly relevant today, usually being picked up by others for
> nostalgic interest, sometimes as spares. That old collection of treasure
> gets spread around again.
> 
> All,
> We now live in the era of the Zero down, zero interest, "I'll pay you
> to take it home" PC. Yes, also at this fair was a VAR dealer w/ pallets
> of pcs. He offered to pay me to take away an Apple 15-inch monitor, any
> one from the cubic sized pallets available. ( Heh-heh, I backed up a
> bit.) Add-on cards, 5 for $1.00, refrigerator-sized boxes of them.
> 200-300Mhz PCs for $10-15. Need a chip, grab a low end Pentium for $2,
> many levels. Lots of (ahem!) Compaqs and Gateways, likely business-based
> boxes from doing pc-cycle upgrades. Ditto for the Mac stuff. I shook my
> head and walked.
> 
> Peter

	Francis E. (Frank) Terman is indeed a famous name in early radio; he
ended up running the EE program at Stanford and later on worked
(directed?) on development of countermeasures gear at Columbia
University's "Radio Research Laboratory" during WW2.  He started out as
a ham - I have an old QST which mentions him going off to Stanford - and
became a famous educator and researcher of great and well-deserved
renown.  He wrote a number of valuable (even now) books and was partly
responsible for working with the Varian brothers in their early Klystron
development.

	As for hams' estates, estate sales are often sad affairs for the widows
who have been told how valuable all this good stuff is.  One wife's junk
is another man's treasure, as we all know.  I bought quite a bit of
stuff from a widow in Florida who wrote that her husband had three
quanset (sp?) huts full of golden treasures she was getting rid of with
the advice of the late husband's ham friends.  Some of the prices were
very good and some were exhorbitant, so the friends didn't necessarily
give her good advice.  My wife is so afraid of having to get rid of all
of my stuff that she's tried to make me promise that "I won't go first".

Ed