Hunting for 60's / 70's oddities

[ChristofferB]

Hey! This didn't really fit anywhere else, so here it goes. I'm a big fan of cold war-ish rack equipment, rack mounted 24H dial clocks, rack mounted rotary dial phones, etc. I've found a certain type of control room indicator lights, in some photos of british particle accelerators from the late 60's, and I simply can't figure out what they're called, and where you may obtain them. Here's the photo:




Now, if a corner alcove-desk rack console isn't enough for ya, and neither is the muriad of nixie displays, look at the top right corner. The status indicator panel.
What are those? who made them, and could they be found? It seems to be individual lamps, with a panel in the same socket in lower right corner of the display. I'd assume it's a 'lamp test' toggle switch, but I can't see.

A display like that would go nicely in a rack with my PDP-11 

-If anyone has a source and datasheet on that sweater, I'd be interested as well!

--Chris

[CJay]

You might strike lucky and find someone at Daresbury or Rutherford Appleton Synchrotron who knows.

[ChristofferB]

Strange coincidence, or keen eyes from your side I don't know, but the image is actually from Daresbury

[CJay]

Not sharp eyes, just a lucky guess.

(I live about 20 miles from Daresbury and it's yet another awesome place I've visited for work, the data centre at Daresbury was impressive, it's where I saw my first real life SGI system and an IBM mainframe they were using to analyse terabytes of tidal and temperature data collected from somewhere around one of the 'capes' of Africa back in the 90s)

Not sure if the synchrotron is still there after Rutherford Appleton became the UK's 'diamond light' source but I'm fairly sure there's still a lot of research done there, it'd definitely be worth sendng an email to see if they have more information

[vk6zgo]

The ones in the photo are very large, & may have been produced "in house".
I've seen many similar but much smaller ones.

[xrunner]

A display like that would go nicely in a rack with my PDP-11 

Cool photo - and I have actually programmed a PDP-11. Love to see more pics like that. 

[MK14]

This picture (with the same or similar display unit), seems to let you zoom in on it and see it in good detail.
Its a very big picture, so I linked to it, rather than embedded it.

http://tardis.dl.ac.uk/computing_history/archive_images/200_6_6_.jpg

[ChristofferB]

ah, in this image you can see the two switches:

"acknowledge and reset" and "test" . I guess this means that the panel has a RS latch thing going. Test is obviously a lamp test of sorts.

I wonder whether the lamps turn off on trouble, or on. I guess off, since they're all lit, and the guys in the pics don't seem to be running and/or screaming.

Maybe there are multiple bulbs in each of different color? There are some visual issues with the lights turning OFF as warning, since if the room light was out, it'd be difficult to make out what the unlit ones say.. maybe they blink on trip?

[ChristofferB]

aand searching for "aknowledge and reset" and "test" brought me to their actual name: annunciators, and can still be found, though not that exact type.

[Mark]

Annunciators have come a long way since then.  Ours have evolved into alarm management systems with web servers, sequence of event recording and the IEC61850 protocol.  We typically sell them for use in power station control rooms. 

[ChristofferB]

Yeah, I'd imagine! It also looks like this is not computer controlled, since it has a light for 'computer' - can't very well have a computer control the computer error display.
Hmm, on second thought, maybe you would.

-It occurs to me that there are two yellow-ish lights in the first picture, and they seem to have bulbs lit in different places than the rest! maybe they all have a white/yellow/red "normal/caution/warning" state.

[ChristofferB]

Annunciators have come a long way since then.  Ours have evolved into alarm management systems with web servers, sequence of event recording and the IEC61850 protocol.  We typically sell them for use in power station control rooms.

But safety is a small prize to pay for that 1960's charm! 

[CJay]

Just because I was passing today:

[CatalinaWOW]

Since they are big a bit of plexy, a little heat transfer of toner from a laser printer, and some time with a 3D printer and you could make your own.  With whatever messages suits your fancy.

"WARNING - Windows Detected"

"12 Bit Limit Exceeded"

"Paper Cut Imminent"

[ChristofferB]

You're right.. (and very clever...) I was actually considering getting some of those digital panel meter frames - and then mount some opaque acrylic in them.
the toner transfer's a great idea!

I'd just love to know how they looked in operation, if they blinked or had multiple colors or such.

[CatalinaWOW]

I am sure that just about anything you can imagine existed, but all of the ones I ever saw were single color.  Most just the yellowish white of an incandescent bulb, but some with a red, green or amber filter.  None of the ones I was around blinked either, but again, I am sure such things existed.

If the toner transfer thing doesn't work out your local screen printing shop can help.

[ChristofferB]

You're likely right. I'd think that those units, especially back then, was just bulbs in a housing, so all the control could be custom, for the user to decide.

If anything else fails, one could just mark the border and then dremel a letter recess and apply dye in that. Actually, if you use crappy quality printer paper, you could just wedge or glue a slice of white paper with printed text behind the acryllic. That'd take care of the diffusion of light too.