Electronics-Lab.com Blog

A potentiometer is a variable resistor used to resist electrical current.

What is a potentiometer? - [Link]

Here’s a half-hour video produced by Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation in 1967 describing the integrated circuit (IC), its design and development process, and giving examples of late 1960s uses of IC technology. Serves to provide some perspective on how the industry started, and how far we’ve come. [via]

Retro integrated circuit video - [Link]

Agilent 2000 X Series Infiniivision Oscilloscope Teardown – [Link]

30-minute film by Errol Morris, commissioned by IBM. Music by Philip Glass

IBM Centennial Film – [Link]

If you would like to know how the world’s first transistor works view the video above. It is made by Engineer Guy Bill Hammack’s. [via]

Bill uses a replica of the point contact transistor built by Walter Brattain and John Bardeen at Bell Labs. On December 23, 1947 they used this device to amplify the output of a microphone and thus started the microelectronics revolution that changed the world. He describes in detail why a transistor works by highlighting the uniqueness of semiconductors in being able to transfer charge by positive and negative carriers.

How the world’s first transistor works - [Link]

Bill opens up a vintage “black box” from a Delta airlines jetliner. He describes how the box withstands high temperatures and crash velocities because it is made from Inconel: A superalloy steels that is used in furnaces and others extreme environments. The flight data recorder he shows is a Sundstrand FA-542 and was likely used on a DC-9 in the 1970s, although it could have been used as late as 1988 on a Boeing 727. [via]

Black box: Inside a flight data recorder - [Link]

Jem Stansfield travels to the Solar Furnace Research Facility in Southern France. He witnesses the incredible power generated by highly concentrated sunlight. http://www.bbc.co.uk/bang [via]

Focused sunlight melts things – [Link]

Jeri shows how to make a light emitting cell with blue glow stick chemicals (DPA). [via]

OLED Demonstration Cell with Glow Stick Chemicals – [Link]

A few weeks ago we posted about Philips ‘Wake Up The Town‘ Experiment. Philips, with acclaimed director Doug Pray began an experiment at the end of October where they took the Philips Wake-up Light to the northern most town on the planet to see what effects it would have on the residents of Longyearbyen. Here, the sun doesn’t rise for 4 months so if the light can work for those living in perpetual darkness it can work anywhere!

Up until now, the campaign website has been keeping us all up to date on each of the residents’ progress, but yesterday the documentary was released. You can view the documentary on the link below.

Philips ‘Wake Up The Town’ Documentary - [Link]

A how-to guide to taking your electronics project from prototype through to high volume PCB manufacture. Covers component selection and purchasing, SMD, DFM, PCB panelisation, gerber generation, drill files, pick and place files, and more.

PCB Design For Manufacture Tutorial – [Link]