Nostalgia Practical Wireless?

[Aerodyne]

I guess I'm showing my age, but for me the feel and look of an actual magazine is the most important thing (after suitable content, of course).
On the subject of the printing method, in the early 1960s Practical Television was printed letterpress, stereotyped and therefore most likely printed on rotary presses. Looking at PWs of the same and earlier eras I believe these too were printed the same way.
Yes, I was an apprentice stereotyper in my earliest working years.
Tony

[Junk Box Nick]

The printing industry has been in decline for years but printing will not disappear. A pulp fiction novel is fine on a kindle but you still cannot beat the look and feel (and smell!) of a quality printed book and there is an appreciation of this by the general public who still buy books in quantity.

When it comes to magazines there is still a browse factor and an impulse buy factor which is why magazine stands are remain full of them - though I regret that I haven't seen a PW on the shelves of any of the WH Smith's I frequent in years.

Something tangible in your hand tends to have more value than something on the screen, though for our purposes a set of searchable PDFs is probably far more convenient than searching through boxes of mags for that circuit you remember seeing sometime in the late sixties.

I still like to settle with a traditional magazine with a cup of tea. I receive some magazines on the screen but I don't read them so thoroughly - in fact often they disappear into the 'later' folder and never get opened. I spend enough of my time in front of a screen anyway. When RadCom arrives the shrink wrap is opened straight away.

Typesetters, block makers, stereotypers, engravers, process camera operators, (film) planners and strippers (always good for a raised eyebrow when discussing lines of work with the uninitiated) all pretty much extinct.

Letterpress has had a resurgence for speciality items like wedding invitations. Ironically, the reason the process is popular is because of the feel of the raised lettering - which in the 'old days' would have been considered poor quality letterpress.

[dave walsh]

It's the general problem of having stacks of everything to move about and deal with Tony/Nick but the actual mag can't be beaten. I've got things in digital format as well but it's not the same is it? I imagine some people will chuck out [not the chintz] but the hard copies as with those who dump vinyl for downloads. Not me! Having developed a classic weiss ring floater in one eye over Xmas, I'm even less inclined to read everything on a screen. I said to the Optician "I've never been involved with a Vice Ring before" but he wasn't impressed

I did see a report in the press a few days ago that sales of audio books and downloads etc are much reduced while printed books are going the other way.This is a bit like the major vinyl revival that is taking place [yet again] currently. Perhaps it's just a blip but I remember that when the use of Morse Code declined, people started learning it. We are a perverse lot stuck on this planet but [so far] it's that bit which makes us different from a computer [I hope].
Dave W

"Open the Pod door please Hal"

[Junk Box Nick]

I must confess to some sacrilege.

Not unusual, I daresay, for many of us on this forum, I seem to have a plethora of interests. Belonging to several organisations brought magazines every month and this began to be a serious storage problem because I had boxes and boxes of them.

I have been a member of RSGB since the early 1970s and seeing that I was given complete sets of Rad Com and the Bulletin for a number of years before I joined, I have nigh on 50 years' worth and these, along with the PWs, SW Mags and others remain intact but occupy considerable space in the spare room.

However with the rest I had to bite the bullet. My major issue was finding a particular article when I needed it and unlike the radio mags a lot of the pages were devoted to waffle, local club reports and advertisements. One Christmas, in those nothingness days between the feast and new year, I set about going through each magazine and tearing out the articles that were of interest or of reference value. The result was that I condensed many boxes of mags into a shelf ring binders of information with articles located by section. What I did notice with some technical articles was that over the years the same article was rehashed time and again.

The mags that remained unmolested I gave away on freecycle and the local paper recycle wagon had to make an extra journey to the depot after visiting my house.

[G6Tanuki]

When I moved house in 2006 I had a cubic-yard of paper - old RadComs/QSTs/Wireless-Worlds/Electronic-Design/RF-Design/Nature/British-Medical-Journal/Bell-System-Technical-Journal and loads of similarly historic biological/veterinary-scientific textbooks from the late-1970s/early-1980s.

I offered them to the local libraries, technical-colleges and "Polyversities" on a come-and-take-it-away-for-free basis. Nobody was interested, so I left the lot in the attic as a surprise for the new owners.

"Old books/Magazines" are essentially worthless - someone I know does house-clearance and she seeks out such stuff on the basis that she gets paid to take it away, drills holes through them to fit dowels, then sells the results at £15-per-yard to provide "ambience" in downmarket theme-pubs.

[kellys_eye]

Likewise I read and kept all the magazines I bought - Elektor, PW, PE, WW, Television, ETI, Radcom, Radio Constructor et al. The boxes were piled high and I'd take them, box-at-a-time, to read through at least once a week.

Sadly they started to deteriorate through mice chewing through them and over the years they were disposed of. Nowadays I collect back issues via electronic format (pdf) and can still sit for hours reading through them!

I'm often tempted to ask donators of old magazines on this forum to pass them via myself for pdf conversion before I could then pass them further on to those that prefer hard copies, however I'm very wary of copyright issues and my good intentions are tempered by the potential repercussions.

This is such a shame really as there is nothing of real 'value' to the original publishers yet maintaining the history (if you will) and the knowledge in a distributable form could benefit many, many people.

If other owners of back issues were prepared to pdf their copies then perhaps a central repository of reference material could be made which would then be a delightful source for research and reminiscing.

Others have linked to websites with such back issues, generally pre-war and up to the 60's, but there isn't anything outside the 'black web' that offers modern issues in a library-accessible form. If the original owners did so via a website with 'live' and concurrent advertising as part of the arrangement I'd still be tempted to peruse it - after all, many of the best articles were the adverts!

[antenna441]

P.W. October 1963 (the year I started work) I still have a copy, and I still have the sig genny that I made from the article. Sadly the ohms law calculator has long gone. You will see from the just visible knob, that it never made it into a case!
I will try to power it, do you think I should change the waxy 0.01 o/p C. ?

[jonnybear]

I would along with the little black Hunts.
John

[dave walsh]

Perhaps I wasn't clear apologies-I do thin out myself but not so dramatically [tempted as I am some times].

Re post 45* Tanuki one of the London Universities threw a valuable Library [they claimed it wasn't but they lied] into skips around the same time so you never had much of a chance really. Low value doesn't translate into get rid however. Try buying a once despised Victorian painting these days. [Andrew Lloyd Webber has a few I believe]. A cubic yard is a lot though I agree 3'x3'x3' [two fridges]

Even I don't keep ex-mice mags Kelly. As for copyright who's going to want to sue who for what if there is no general market? One or both parties would need to have a lot of money in the first place. "You have nothing to fear but fear itself" FDR Inauguration 1933. In my opinion PW missed the boat for repros in print years ago never mind digital, as demonstrated re the continuing enthusiasm for old copies here and elsewhere.
Dave W

[Junk Box Nick]

I would say my radio mags alone amount to a cubic yard or more. A medium size fridge with a freezer compartment could easily occupy the space...

[radioman]

Originally Posted by Junk Box Nick

... One Christmas, in those nothingness days between the feast and new year, I set about going through each magazine and tearing out the articles that were of interest or of reference value. The result was that I condensed many boxes of mags into a shelf ring binders of information with articles located by section.

Well, I like reading through these old magazines and was pleased to find at a local car-boot sale many boxes full of old Practical Electronics and Elektors from the 60's and 70's, as I didn't start buying my own copies untill the late 70's.
The woman who was selling them said they had belonged to her late father.
So I bought them for a few £'s and once getting them home eagerly started going through my 'treasure'.
Unfortunately, like Nick above, the original owner had decided to carefully cut out all the interesting projects from many of the magazines presumably to store together in one file/folder but this important item was not amongst the old magazines !

So the moral of the story is that if you must defile your old magazines destroy the evidence (!)
or better scan the articles of interest to you instead and worry about the disposal later...
at least if they are intact they will still have the potential to be useful to someone.

Andy

[dave walsh]

Just been in pm contact with a Forum member about this subject and suddenly realised there was a discussion on Gardeners World in the background re a Designers Archive, notes, books etc. How things on e-mail don't get preserved and would all the valuable info even perhaps end up in a skip? It's not just the wonderfull world of wireless is it?.
Dave W

PS Just heard trail on R4 You and Yours next week. What to do with all that "stuff" in the house-we are not alone!