Anybody like Electrical Stuff?

[Glenn2]

A few from the archives when I worked in the chemistry department at University of Calgary in the sixties and seventies. We were studying how organic molecules came apart when you hit them with a lot of radiation.

The first photo is a selfie with the ESR (electron spin resonance) spectrometer we put together. The plumbing above the magnet is a microwave bridge circuit, some of my handy work.



Atomic Energy Canada donated one of their smaller Van de Graff accelerators to the university and I had a big hand in getting it up and running.
This is the guts of the machine, in operation it would have the pressure tank in the background bolted on and filled with insulating gas. A 2 MeV electron beam came out a tube on the other end. The accelerator was underground with lots of shielding as it produced some very hard X-rays.
This was an assisted selfie, the prof I worked with used my M4 to get this shot of the department head and myself posing with the beast.

 

[x-ray]

Love your shots!

I worked at Oak Ridge National Lab in the mid 70’s. Just behind my office was a 4MeV Van De Graff and a 33MeV cyclotron about a block away. And across from the Van De Graff was a lower energy linear accelerator in an underground bunker. I wish I had a photo of the vault doors for the cyclotron. Each weighed 55 tons and were 7 feet thick if I recall correctly.

There was a heavy ion accelerator added to the cyclotron but that’s shut down now since they built the spallation neutron source.

 

[Out to Lunch]

 

[Zuiko-logist]

Utility Pole (Fomapan 100) by Mark Wyatt, on Flickr

This is very unsettling. Good work!

 

[Glenn2]

Sounds like you had some interesting times X-ray. After getting the Van De Graff running I decided to do a big career jump and moved to Vancouver Island in 1978. The next 25 years were spent working in climate science and studying the oceans role in absorbing greenhouse gasses.
Lots of design and building of science gadgets while learning computer interfacing to handle the flood of data. Although there were still underground labs for large instruments like mass spectrometers I only worked on non-radioactive isotopes like carbon-13. Got to go on expeditions aboard research ships and commercial vessels visiting much of the Pacific.

My last trip was in 1991 from Vladivostok to Hilo Hawaii on a Soviet research ship. Couldn't fly into Vladivostok as it was a closed city at the time. Had to fly to Khabarovsk and catch the Trans Siberian for the last leg of the journey. Was given an informal tour upon arrival by Russian scientists and commented on the antennas on a particular roof as I'm into ham radio. The antennas belonged to the local ham group who I was introduced to. After showing me their station they asked if I wanted a closer look at the antennas. Upon saying yes the third story window was opened and we had to inch along the narrow ledge to the fire escape ladder and climb it to the roof. Once up there one of the hams used my 3f and 5cm Elmar to get this group photo, that's me in the middle. If you look real close you will see some streaks in the sky. It was only on this one roll, the one that was in the camera when they insisted it be x-rayed on arrival. Probably fogging from that scan.





This ones from the seventies gives an idea what computing was like back in the day. I'd just dropped off a deck of punch cards for a processing job and grabbed a photo with M4 and 35mm Summilux on 80 iso Agfa colour neg.

 

[x-ray]

Sounds like you had some interesting times X-ray. After getting the Van De Graff running I decided to do a big career jump and moved to Vancouver Island in 1978. The next 25 years were spent working in climate science and studying the oceans role in absorbing greenhouse gasses.
Lots of design and building of science gadgets while learning computer interfacing to handle the flood of data. Although there were still underground labs for large instruments like mass spectrometers I only worked on non-radioactive isotopes like carbon-13. Got to go on expeditions aboard research ships and commercial vessels visiting much of the Pacific.

My last trip was in 1991 from Vladivostok to Hilo Hawaii on a Soviet research ship. Couldn't fly into Vladivostok as it was a closed city at the time. Had to fly to Khabarovsk and catch the Trans Siberian for the last leg of the journey. Was given an informal tour upon arrival by Russian scientists and commented on the antennas on a particular roof as I'm into ham radio. The antennas belonged to the local ham group who I was introduced to. After showing me their station they asked if I wanted a closer look at the antennas. Upon saying yes the third story window was opened and we had to inch along the narrow ledge to the fire escape ladder and climb it to the roof. Once up there one of the hams used my 3f and 5cm Elmar to get this group photo, that's me in the middle. If you look real close you will see some streaks in the sky. It was only on this one roll, the one that was in the camera when they insisted it be x-rayed on arrival. Probably fogging from that scan.



View attachment 4819244

This ones from the seventies gives an idea what computing was like back in the day. I'd just dropped off a deck of punch cards for a processing job and grabbed a photo with M4 and 35mm Summilux on 80 iso Agfa colour neg.

View attachment 4819245

I only stayed at ORNL for a year and a half. I didn’t like working for the government much. I was in the photo department and worked between different facilities whenever they needed help.

I have a degree in chemistry and microbiology and was in the process of transferring to the environmental sciences department when I got an offer from a pretty major ad agency to run their photo and motion picture department. I took the position and ran it for 9 years and then opened my own commercial studio. I retired last year after nearly 55 years in the business. It has been a fun experience.

 

[Glenn2]

I almost forgot, came across an interesting website a while back. It’s called “lightning on demand”, check out some of the videos.

Lightning On Demand

 

[x-ray]

I almost forgot, came across an interesting website a while back. It’s called “lightning on demand”, check out some of the videos.

Lightning On Demand

Thanks for sharing. Very COOL!

 

[bullterrier]

Sigma SD9 x3f file open with rawtherapee then extracting the blue channel from jpg (not tiff) with XnviewMP

Edit:..and no its not a Joke,i´m serious😱

 

[Axel]

Old stuff from our countryside...



... shot with my old stuff SLT A33/Minolta AF 1.7/50



and 3.5-5.6/18-55 SAMII

 

[raydm6]

I see this all over Phnom Penh. Pretty wild cable management scheme. There are some more condensed than this example.

 

[Deleted member 82967]

I see this all over Phnom Penh. Pretty wild cable management scheme. There are some more condensed than this example.

... and probably not a wire marker to be seen ...

 

[Pál_K]

Sounds like you had some interesting times X-ray. After getting the Van De Graff running I decided to do a big career jump and moved to Vancouver Island in 1978. The next 25 years were spent working in climate science and studying the oceans role in absorbing greenhouse gasses.
Lots of design and building of science gadgets while learning computer interfacing to handle the flood of data. Although there were still underground labs for large instruments like mass spectrometers I only worked on non-radioactive isotopes like carbon-13. Got to go on expeditions aboard research ships and commercial vessels visiting much of the Pacific.

My last trip was in 1991 from Vladivostok to Hilo Hawaii on a Soviet research ship. Couldn't fly into Vladivostok as it was a closed city at the time. Had to fly to Khabarovsk and catch the Trans Siberian for the last leg of the journey. Was given an informal tour upon arrival by Russian scientists and commented on the antennas on a particular roof as I'm into ham radio. The antennas belonged to the local ham group who I was introduced to. After showing me their station they asked if I wanted a closer look at the antennas. Upon saying yes the third story window was opened and we had to inch along the narrow ledge to the fire escape ladder and climb it to the roof. Once up there one of the hams used my 3f and 5cm Elmar to get this group photo, that's me in the middle. If you look real close you will see some streaks in the sky. It was only on this one roll, the one that was in the camera when they insisted it be x-rayed on arrival. Probably fogging from that scan.



View attachment 4819244

This ones from the seventies gives an idea what computing was like back in the day. I'd just dropped off a deck of punch cards for a processing job and grabbed a photo with M4 and 35mm Summilux on 80 iso Agfa colour neg.

View attachment 4819245

PDP8 system with DECtape!

 

[Rob-F]

That computer has a rather cobbled together from parts look! Is there a brand name? Control Data, maybe?

 

[Out to Lunch]

My mother bought it in the late 40s/early 50s. Ms. OtL is still using it today.

 

[BernardL]

That computer has a rather cobbled together from parts look! Is there a brand name? Control Data, maybe?

The two bays on the right are definitely PDP (PDP-8?) computers by DEC. I've entered many times the bootloader into the white and orange toggle switches on right. The small reels are DecTape. The large tape drives may be from independent suppliers.

 

[Pál_K]

It’s definitely a PDP-8 as I mentioned earlier. The PDP-8 is on the left with brown and white toggle switches. There is a DECTape unit just above it (notable by the large white spool) and another one to the right, above the CRT. I think there’s a Kennedy tape controller above that, for the two large 9-track tape drives further to the left.

PDP-8’s were 12-bit machines descended from the DEC’s early LINC-8 (Laboratory Instrument Computer). Notation was in octal. After the PDP-8, DEC introduced the PDP-11 series - these are 16-bit machines.

This is familiar stuff for me. I have my own PDP-11 system, with lights and switches on the console, with floppies, and a hard disk drive. I worked with PDP-11’s for many years. I programmed them exclusively in assembly language, which I love.

At UCLA in the 1970’s, they had a PDP-12 in a lab at the UCLA Medical Center that I programmed (a PDP-12 is a combined PDP-8 and LINC-8). But the main computers at UCLA were the IBM-360/91KK’s at the medical center and at the Engineering department’s CCN (Campus Computing Network) which I used for many years.

 

[Glenn2]

The PDP-8 was even sold in kit form by Heath. I know because I built one back in the seventies. It had a reader for paper punch tape and was also able to punch holes in blank tape. Soon learned to backup useful tapes as it had a nasty habit of eating the occasional snack/tape.

The last place I worked had a PDP-11 that they couldn’t give away, no one had the room or any interest. It probably went to a scrap yard somewhere.

 

[x-ray]

My wife and I are in Las Vegas this week and went to Hoover Dam. I just snapped a couple of images on my phone and shot the majority on my Fuji X-T3 sh here are a couple of quick ones.

 

[Axel]

I like such obsolete electrical elements