I'm back to work on my EIA Code compilation project after a long hiatus, so I thought I'd re-post it for those that may have missed it.
What are EIA codes?For anyone researching old electronics and their manufacturers (circa 1946 to 2001), the 6-8 digit EIA code that is printed on components can shed a lot of light on the history of electronic components. A lot of people use these codes to find who made speakers, potentiometers, transformers, etc. and also to date when those components were manufactured.
This page on Triode Electronics does a great job of explaining how to make use of them, but the list of companies on that page is far from complete:
http://www.triodeel.com/eiacode.htmSo what is this thing?Over the last 2 years I've been digitizing and compiling as many EIA Production Source Date Code lists as I could scrounge together into a massive, searchable spreadsheet. No longer will you need to fiddle with PDF documents containing scanned images of 50 year old paper!
My list so far (V 3.4) compiles 25 different yearly lists (of the total 55 lists ever published between 1946 to 2001), and despite that there are still plenty of different company numbers that are missing from the list (about 61 by my count, not counting re-used EIA numbers over the years).
I just got physical copies of 7 EIA code lists, that are unavailable on the internet, from about 1964 to 1971 and I'll be digitizing them in the coming weeks/months. The plan is to have a total of 31 lists in the compilation by the end of summer.
Eventually the plan is to complete the collection and then I can simplify the list down to just date ranges.
Is all this really necessary?Of course not. I'm just weird and I like doing this archival work.
If you work on old Tube gear, you could probably get by fine with just using one or two lists from the 50's and 60's, but the history of the codes in the 70's and onwards is still murky. Seeing enough esoteric components over a long enough career, you're bound to run into some obscure EIA code that requires way too much research than is worth to figure out the manufacturer.
Well I've done the work for you and it's freely available to anyone who wants to make use of it!
Here is my ever-evolving Google spreadsheet compilation of EIA codes. Save and share to your hearts content:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P1jeVIQ9UdwlhXTDLQEDxYuShjFQZO_4tUchw5_8N9o/edit?usp=sharing