Author Topic: 1950's Printed circuit design  (Read 1353 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline SeanBTopic starter

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 16385
  • Country: za
1950's Printed circuit design
« on: June 14, 2023, 05:09:09 pm »


A movie about PCB design from the 1950's, a step forward from hand to hand wiring, and a slow beginning to the modern PCB.  None of the methods show there, aside from the potted assembly, are used currently, but you can see how the modern PCB came from this beginning research, even if it all is now totally obsolete to a great part.
 
The following users thanked this post: 807

Offline VK3DRB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2272
  • Country: au
Re: 1950's Printed circuit design
« Reply #1 on: June 15, 2023, 12:39:47 am »
Fascinating. The days of manual resist tape weren't so bad after all. Incredibly manual and tedious work by the looks. I liked the manufacture of the integrated circuit by potting. IBM was making integrated circuits as far back as the 1930's, where resistors were integrated into valves (vacuum tubes). These were used in punch card processing business machines, like the IBM 557, 548 and 514. The valves were use as one-bit memory, like using a flip-flops.
 

Offline EPAIII

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1165
  • Country: us
Re: 1950's Printed circuit design
« Reply #2 on: June 22, 2023, 08:44:56 am »
Transistors? Transistors?? We don't need no stinking transistors, we got valves!
Paul A.  -   SE Texas
And if you look REAL close at an analog signal,
You will find that it has discrete steps.
 

Offline EPAIII

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1165
  • Country: us
Re: 1950's Printed circuit design
« Reply #3 on: June 22, 2023, 09:00:05 am »
Did I see surface mounted, ceramic capacitors being soldered with a Weller soldering GUN?

OK, they were a bit bigger than today's, but still .....
Paul A.  -   SE Texas
And if you look REAL close at an analog signal,
You will find that it has discrete steps.
 

Offline RoGeorge

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7012
  • Country: ro
Re: 1950's Printed circuit design
« Reply #4 on: June 22, 2023, 09:57:52 am »
A soldering gun works great even for the nowadays small sized SMDs.  For the smaller ones, wire a piece of thin copper on the otherwise thicker tip of the soldering gun (I use copper thin wire from stripped CAT5 LAN cable leftovers).  Let half a cm or so LAN wire in the air, that will become the new soldering tip.  For best results, solder under an optical microscope.  Works great for casual soldering/desoldering/replacing a SMD component, but not a very productive method for assembling a full PCB.

The funny thing is that if you left loose both ends of the thin wire, and bend them apart just the right distance, that can be used like a desoldering tweezers.  Or make a small loop with the thin wire, so to heat all pins at once and desolder small SMDs of 3-6 pins.  :)
« Last Edit: June 22, 2023, 10:01:18 am by RoGeorge »
 

Offline VK3DRB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2272
  • Country: au
Re: 1950's Printed circuit design
« Reply #5 on: June 22, 2023, 11:43:27 pm »
Transistors? Transistors?? We don't need no stinking transistors, we got valves!

Not so funny. The CSIRO wanted funding to develop a new technology called integrated circuits using silicon in the early 1960's. The government denied the funding say the we are the best at valve technology and should stick to what we know. Most politicians rarely had any technical knowledge or vision beyond that of a five year old back then and even today.
 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf