I know it’s only filling up bins in my shop and taking money I could be pouring into more productive hobbies, like drinking and shooting guns. But what if the completion of some future project, some really crucial bit of hijinks, hinges entirely on my having a switch designed to discharge massive capacitors? Then what what, huh?

Am I supposed to just assume my local electronics retailer will have my back? Not likely.

I was doing better, I really was, and then I visited the DeAnza flea market in Cupertino last year, and it all fell apart again. I don’t know, maybe I’m beyond help. Check the photo gallery for some electronics-nerd eye candy, the detritus of my demon.

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Mystery Relay Switch Thing
In the “I can’t identify” column, we have this thing here, with two sets of relay driven contacts and some big ass resistors. Does anyone want to hazard a guess? Vin Marshall

Charge/Discharge Switch
Shocking: I can only assume that this switch was used to charge and discharge giant banks of capacitors with AWESOME results. Vin Marshall

Rotary Switch
Five separate sets of contacts on a 6-position rotary switch spells some specialised and long-forgotten application. I’m not convinced I won’t have a need for the same one day, so here it sits. Check out the paper labels on the resistors. Vin Marshall

Bezel Indicators
Bezel panel indicators for the control panel of that killer robot, before he breaks free of his laboratory confines and becomes an out of control killer robot. Vin Marshall

Bus Terminators
Bus terminators from a Data General Eclipse (see: Soul of a New Machine, mantra for Electrical Engineers). I can’t imagine I’ll ever use them, but I wanted to keep some keepsake from the Eclipse, and this was just about the lightest part in there. Vin Marshall

Panel Meter
I’ll have to come out and admit it here; I like to collect panel meters. This one is a little more complicated than the average, with two adjustable upper and lower limit needles. The gauge face reads: Set to 3.5 volts. Vin Marshall

Wire Wrapping
Wire Wrapping. The few times I’ve had to do this, I found it relaxing to do and rather mind-bending to debug. It sure does look neat though. Does anyone still do this? Vin Marshall

Antique Radio & Switchboard Wire
Radio & Switchboard cable — Lenz Electric Mfg Co. It came to me in a box of other things that were actually useful. The wire is all right, but the packaging is superb. Vin Marshall

Tihanyi applied for his first television patent in 1926 (page 10 of which is the pic above), the same year Baird publicly showcased his mechanical TV. However his system – which he called Radioskop – was fully electronic, using a cathode ray tube to display the moving images. It used a technology known as the “storage principle” which according to Wikipedia involves “the maintenance of photoemission from the light-sensitive layer of the detector tube between scans. By this means, accumulation of charges would take place and the “latent electric picture” would be stored.”

Initially, Tihanyi didn’t quite have a lot of success selling his idea. In 1928 he took his invention to Berlin to Telefunken and Siemens, who both decided to pursue the mechanical television path. It was only in 1930, when the American company RCA approached him about developing his patents, that the fully electronic television really began to take off. In 1934, RCA purchased Tihanyi’s patents and developed them, showing off their first fully electronic TV at the 1939 World’s Fair and beginning broadcasts at the same time.

And it was at this point, you could argue, that TV really started to take off.

History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.

[Pic from Wikipedia]

Truth be told, seeing an image of the Sinclair Sovereign on Boing Boing Gadgets this morning sparked a wave of nostalgia among those of us here who are old enough to remember the nutty little company. For those of you who are unfamiliar, allow me get you up to speed.

Clive Sinclair is one of those obsessive tinkerers that has his hand in various and seemingly unrelated kinds of gadgetry. Kind of like a predecessor of the James Dyson types we hear a lot about today. As mentioned earlier, Sinclair developed the first pocket calculators starting with the Executive model in 1972, but he also single-handedly launched the personal computer industry in England with his ZX Spectrum 10 years later. The Spectrum ran on a 3.5MHz Zilog Z80A CPU, with 16K-49KB of RAM and eye popping 256×192 resolution. Not powerful by any stretch of the imagination, but it was affordable and easy to operate which made it attractive to a mass audience. Eventually, it earned Sinclair a fortune and a knighthood from the Queen for his service to British industry.

Sinclair’s obsession with making gadgets smaller extended to several other product categories including mini TVs like the MTV-1, radios and, most recently, electric vehicles like the underwater SeaScooter for divers and the ill-fated cross between a Segway and a scooter that was the C5.

Perhaps the only thing more interesting than his inventions is Clive Sinclair the man. Not surprisingly, he is a brilliant mathematician who has spent part of his later years using this skill to become a champion poker player. Sinclair is also a member of the British chapter of Mensa, serving as chairman of directors for the organisation from 1980 to 1997. His Wikipedia article even claims that he doesn’t use the internet despite being a major figure in the history of computing. I suppose that means he probably wont read this, but I still want to acknowledge him and his (ongoing) work.

The first problem is, nearly all electronics are lumped together, despite differences in their innards and the services they perform. The second problem is this constant generic request to turn them “off”. Until airlines can speak coherently about eBooks, smartphones, tablets and other traveller-friendly gadgets—and address the various states of rest between “on” and “off”—the system remains in a sphere of stupidity. Whether this is mildly annoying or potentially deadly remains to be seen.

The last time I flew, I had in my carry-on bag three cameras, three laptops, a smartphone and a classic iPod. Judging from the long security lines, I wasn’t the only one trucking plentiful gadgetry.

When I got on the plane, the flight attendant asked everyone to turn “off” phones and other portable electronics. She appeared at my side as I was switching my iPhone to aeroplane mode and repeated, “It’s time to turn off your portable electronics.” I replied, “That’s what I’m doing.” She sneered like a 1930s copper who’d just collared the dumbest guy in the bootlegging operation: “So flipping through screens is how you turn it off? There’s no on-off switch on the side?” She thought she’d caught me in a lie. I just looked back in disbelief, made the screen magically go dark, and put my supposedly “off” phone back in my pocket, satisfying whatever interpretation of the rules was in this poor misinformed woman’s head.

On another leg of our journey, just before takeoff, a flight attendant pointed to the eBook reader my wife was using and said in a stern voice, “Please turn off all portable electronics”. She did not ask the gentleman seated next to us to turn off his digital watch, though it may well have been drawing more power at the time.

Worst of all, she did not check every single mobile phone and laptop to make sure they were in a state where they could not emit a hefty dose of RF. Most of the smartphones on board were probably in standby (with some kind of radio emission still happening) and most laptops were probably closed but not powered down — hopefully sleeping.

The only command we’re given is to turn stuff “off” — a command increasingly ignored for its incoherence. What does it mean for a phone or iPod to be “off”? Most people don’t even know. If the command is this easy to ignore with no consequences, the likely conclusion is that the gear really isn’t a threat. But if it is, the airlines may not discover their own boneheadedness until the danger reaches some lethal saturation point.

Here’s the actual FAA regulation:

§ 121.306   Portable electronic devices.
(a) Except as provided in paragraph (b) of this section, no person may operate, nor may any operator or pilot in command of an aircraft allow the operation of, any portable electronic device on any U.S.-registered civil aircraft operating under this part.
(b) Paragraph (a) of this section does not apply to—
(1) Portable voice recorders;
(2) Hearing aids;
(3) Heart pacemakers;
(4) Electric shavers; or
(5) Any other portable electronic device that the [airline] has determined will not cause interference with the navigation or communication system of the aircraft on which it is to be used.
(c) The determination required by paragraph (b)(5) of this section shall be made by that [airline] operating the particular device to be used.
[Doc. No. FAA–1998–4954, 64 FR 1080, Jan. 7, 1999]

You will have noticed the date, 1999, but still, that preamble speaks volumes: “no person may operate…any portable electronic device on any US-registered civil aircraft…” followed by exception after exception. The mentality of that is old school, to put it politely. You will also note that the discretion is left up to the airline (with heavy support from the aircraft maker), layering on confusion in sugary heaps.

What is the issue? This suggests it is “interference with navigation or communication systems”, and in that case, it’s understandable that such potential for jamming is minimised during the most dangerous parts of the flight, take off and landing. All electronics give off a bit of radiation; communications devices like phones and laptops give off considerably more. Minimise the amount of RF emissions (including unpredictable radio “harmonics”) and you will reduce the chances—however unlikely in the first place—that portable electronics will threaten the safety of the flight.

That was Boeing’s recommendation to the feds 10 years ago, when mobile phones were starting to boom, and it makes sense. Unfortunately, what’s going on now is a mere pantomime true RF security. Here’s why:

Smartphones
How many people actually know how to turn off their smartphone? When I carried a BlackBerry, I never turned it off, because it took like 5 minutes to power back on. At the same time, I was always finding it fully awake in my bag or pocket, long after I thought I’d secured it. You CrackBerry addicts are making fun of me right now, and that’s fine, but the fact is, I can’t possibly be alone. How many people know about aeroplane mode on iPhones or other phones? For flight attendants, turning off the screen is all that apparently matters, but there’s no way that is truly compliant.

Laptops
When was the last time you shut off your laptop during the boarding process? When I run out of the house, I just slam the thing shut and shove it in my bag. When I am at the airport, I pop it open to do some work. So when I’m finally at an altitude where it is safe to use portable electronics, I pop it open and then remember to turn off Wi-Fi. And not so we don’t plummet out of the air—more so I can save at least some battery life. My guess is that most people who carry laptops on board just let them sleep, with Wi-Fi engaged. And on certain Vista notebooks I’ve carried, just closing the lid didn’t mean squat.

Handheld Gaming Systems
Back about 14 years ago, there were a spate of reports that Game Boys were causing interference with the operation of planes. According to Boeing, there was never any actual proof of this, though it did inspire one of the funniest Simpsons moments ever. The real joke is, back then, portable gaming systems didn’t all come with embedded Wi-Fi and Bluetooth like they do now. My guess is that many a properly stowed Nintendo DS can still sniff around the plane for cute Nintendogs or whatever, even with the lid closed.

eBook Readers
This one is going to need special attention. I often get quite a bit of quality reading done at take-off and landing, precisely because I can’t pop open a device and watch a movie or a TV show. But when I carry a Kindle or some other reader, I can’t use it during that happy time. The question is, why can’t I? With the 3G radio turned off—a very easy manoeuvre—an eBook reader uses less battery life than the Bluetooth earbud on standby that you may have forgotten to take off your ear. There is no power needed to hold a picture on e-ink, so the battery is only taxed when the page is turned. How’s this for irony? If you are looking at a page of words, your reader actually is off.

Noise-Cancelling Headphones
Here’s where most airlines get it right. Anything that takes 35 hours to drain a single AAA battery and has no inherent telecommunication function probably isn’t going to cause the plane to go into an “uncommanded roll”. Armies of Bose addicts fly friendly and unfriendly skies every day, and are generally allowed to use their own big ole cans during take-off and landing, provided they’re attached to the airlines’ audio system and not their own iPod. This kind of common sense needs to be applied to other devices.

In the end, what we’ve really got is an increasing array of devices that are replacing the books and crosswords of yore, and almost none of them have an “on-off switch” on the side. They’re powered up and doing their thing, often while still nestled inside our pockets or our bags. Some are perfectly harmless beyond a shadow of a doubt, some could easily join together to form a cloud of harmless or harmful electromagnetic radiation. So why are airlines so confused? Hell, they’ve made special dispensations permitting knitting needles, even metre-long metal suckers. Is it too much to ask that they give equal consideration to our many cherished gadgets?

The products are all packaged in “frustration free” packaging, and include HDMI cables, Ethernet cords and blank DVDs, to name a few.

This has to irk the consumer electronics companies that currently sell marked up cables and other items in Amazon’s virtual marketplace already, but Paul Ryder, Amazon’s vice president for consumer electronics and wireless, said all they’ll need is a little re-education.

“I’m sure some vendors of cables and blank media are going to ask us, ‘What just happened?’ We’ll educate them that we saw value available to the customer in the market, and with our relationship with the vendor, we wanted to give that value to customers,” he said over at the New York Times Bits blog. [Amazon via Bits]

Spotted at a Taiwanese book show, these two Delta Electronics displays, though formally spec-less, are clearly astounding in quality. Coming in monochrome and colour configurations, apparently the black and white version has better contrast, but both feature very sharp visuals. Indeed, even when shrunken and compressed in our lead image, you can still make out some of the headlines along with the specific anatomy of Obama’s impressive earlobes.

So while the world will probably buzz next about the new Kindle, keep in mind what we could be seeing in e-paper technology, even if a 24-inch display is a little too large to fit in most briefcases. [Engadget China via Engadget]

A source in the know informs us that no matter how exactly things move forward from here (it’s still murky as to the logistical details from a store level over the next few days), any sales will be gone with all prices moving back to MSRP, or well over market price in most cases. Oh, and watch those extended warranties, too. [MSNBC]

We study single-parameter quantised charge pumping via a semiconductor quantum dot in high magnetic fields. The quantum dot is defined between two top gates in an AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructure. Application of an oscillating voltage to one of the gates leads to pumped current plateaus in the gate characteristic, corresponding to controlled transfer of integer multiples of electrons per cycle. In a perpendicular-to-plane magnetic field the plateaus become more pronounced indicating an improved current quantization. Current quantization is sustained up to magnetic fields where full spin polarization of the device can be expected.

See what I mean? Here’s the translation: By using the electrons spin, you can transport more information faster and using less energy than with normal chips, which just push electrons. The invention could lead to the development of “spintronics”, which some people postulate as the future of information technology.

Hmm. OK, translation 2: Electron spins. Faster computers. Less power. Cool kickassery. [AIP via Nanowerk]

That kind of power and size make it the largest and most efficient shredder in North America. If there was such a thing as gadget hell, this would be it. So all of those buggy devices out there that give us problems had better shape up their act—or this is where they will end up. [ERI via I4U and BusinessWire]

The RAM’s design is simple enough to comprehend. It consists of clear oxide film and electrodes placed on a glass or plastic circuit board.

And while researchers haven’t successfully developed any other PC components, it’s believed that their same process could apply to CMOS chips, which would pretty much open the door wide open for application in hand held electronics. With enough money to back manufacturing of current technologies, it’s believed we could see commercial products in 3-4 years.

When you take a look at the above concept or this glass phone, it’s not all that hard to imagine the interesting potential of see-through electronics. [fareastgizmos]