Electronics seems like magic!

[Omega Supreme]

I was disappointed to find out that military electronics were twenty years behind. They are big and analog and seem like a blast from the past.

There are reasons for this.

Military systems must:

Survive heat, cold, shock, radiation, moisture, vibration, and EMP.

• Work flawlessly after years of storage or under battle damage conditions.

Because of this, the military uses proven, ruggedized components that have been thoroughly tested. Civilian electronics evolve every year — but military gear can’t afford to crash or burn out in the field.

Result: They use older, larger, slower but ultra-reliable technologies.

Analog circuits:

• Handle high power and radio frequency (RF) signals better.
• Are more resistant to EMP (electromagnetic pulse) and nuclear radiation, which can fry microchips.
• Have continuous response without digital sampling delays.

So for radar front ends, jamming systems, sensors, or missile guidance, analog circuits still dominate the early signal path — digital only takes over after initial processing.

Soldiers need to repair equipment in the field with minimal tools.
Large analog modules, through-hole components, and modular circuit cards make this possible.
Tiny SMD digital boards like in smartphones can’t be fixed outside a lab.

Failures in combat have enormous consequences, so they value stability and predictability over cutting-edge performance.

 

[AnalogKid]

I was disappointed to find out that military electronics were twenty years behind.

Would you be less disappointed to find out it's only 1 to 5 years behind?

ak

 

[Omega Supreme]

Would you be less disappointed to find out it's only 1 to 5 years behind?

ak

No, because I expected military electronics would be far more technologically advanced than consumer electronics.

 

[AnalogKid]

No, because I expected military electronics would be far more technologically advanced than consumer electronics.

Some are, some aren't. What are your expectations based on?

Grand sweeping generalizations about technology almost always are incorrect. (Ahhh - but what about grand sweeping generalizations about grand, sweeping generalizations - ?)

ak

 

[Omega Supreme]

Some are, some aren't. What are your expectations based on?

Grand sweeping generalizations about technology almost always are incorrect. (Ahhh - but what about grand sweeping generalizations about grand, sweeping generalizations - ?)

ak

Military Sci-Fi:

I thought it was going to be as cool as what I saw on TV like Star Trek, Star Wars, Transformers, Voltron, G.I. Joe, the Terminator movies, Robotech, etc.

 

[AnalogKid]

Commercial, and particularly visual sci-fi (TV and film as opposed to printed novels) is notoriously fickle. Look at the main, big spacecraft control room in 2001 compared to the one in 2010. It looks like while the storyline advanced 10 years, spacecraft control systems regressed 50 years.

Switches and Buttons and Lights - Oh MY!

ak

 

[Omega Supreme]

The Smith Chart is a magical tool in designing RF and Microwave circuits.
It seems like designing circuits is simply a matter of determining the necessary resistances, inductances, and capacitances. I hope I’m not oversimplifying.

 

[bertus]

 

[Omega Supreme]

I’m interested in monetizing the magic of electronics like Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs.

Thomas Edison was a great inventor in his own right, no question about it. Yet he was able to profit off of Tesla’s superior knowledge of AC as being the most efficient way to deliver power. Southern California Edison bears his name to this day.

Bill Gates was smart, but even Elon Musk said he was not strong in the sciences. Gates purchased DOS from a friend for around ten thousand dollars. Gate’s father was a lawyer so he drew up the papers signing over all ownership of DOS to Bill Gates. So DOS belongs to Gates; it’s his even though he did not create it. And DOS was the foundation for Windows, which Bill Gates is credited for, even though the design, Apple claimed, was stolen and modified from the Macintosh prototypes.

Steve Jobs I don’t think was really a technical guy. That was Steve Wozniak. It is amazing how he is credited as the inventor of the Apple Computers, Macintosh, the iPod, the iPhone, and iPad even though he could not possibly have had the electronics knowledge to actually design and build the circuitry.

I’d love to be a Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs.

 

[Omega Supreme]

I’ve never encountered Arduino outside the Maker community, occasionally among Hams, Electronics Hobbyists. It seems like it’s exclusively for personal use.

Which is why I’ve never been motivated to look into it, because I’ve never seen it utilized in academia or out in industry.

I’ve seen Raspberry Pi’s used, although I’ve never found any reason to use them myself. I don’t know why they’re so popular.

Arduino and Raspberry Pi’s are a total mystery to me, but to many they seem like indispensable, magical devices that have endless applications.

 

[AnalogKid]

I’m interested in monetizing the magic of electronics like Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs.

Edison was a machinist and a botanist. Gates and Jobs were typists.

ak

 

[Omega Supreme]

Edison was a machinist and a botanist. Gates and Jobs were typists.

ak

They were magicians in the sense that they used the same magic as the “Wizard of Oz”:

“The Man Behind the Curtain”

The supposed powerful leader turns out to be ordinary, human, or a fraud.

The Wizard is just a man with machines and smoke.

In a metaphorical sense, the Wizard is a magician who doesn’t realize he’s performing a deeper truth:

The illusion can still create real transformation.

Dorothy’s journey works because she believes in the illusion long enough to grow from it.

They reveal hidden truths through illusion, using illusion to conceal truth but still triggering transformation.

• Serving as guides or catalysts.
• Helping the hero access inner power.

The Wizard of Oz is a fraud and a teacher. His “trick” ironically helps everyone learn they already had what they needed.

They build an illusion (Oz) that makes us feel, think, and change.

That’s the same craft stage magicians use — illusion to create transformation.

When the Wizard is revealed as fake, the emotional truth remains:

• He still helps Dorothy realize her inner power.
• The companions still discover their virtues.

The “You Already Had What You Needed” Revelation

Trope: Inner Strength / Power Within / Self-Discovery

• Definition: The hero and companions realize that they possessed the qualities they were seeking all along.
• Each character already embodied the virtues they thought they lacked.

He’s part engineer, part actor, part illusionist — just like real magicians.

 

[poormystic]

Edison is a man to admire - if you're a wannabe inventor. Just wow!

His stuff didn't get made by accident - nor by lightning flash inspiration, mostly - he used teams of investigators to put in man-years of research into materials and their properties.

In one exception to the methodical investigative methods he usually used, he invented a wonderful loudspeaking telephone.
Through some leap of intuition, Edison knew that he could electromodulate the friction between a small, flat metal tongue and a cylinder of slightly moist chalk rotating beneath the tongue.
The tongue of metal was connected by a short, stiff wire to the centre of a loudspeaking acoustic element.

I’ve tried to draw a diagram of Edison’s loudspeaker using Gimp.

 

[Omega Supreme]

Edison is a man to admire - if you're a wannabe inventor. Just wow!

His stuff didn't get made by accident - nor by lightning flash inspiration, mostly - he used teams of investigators to put in man-years of research into materials and their properties.

In one exception to the methodical investigative methods he usually used, he invented a wonderful loudspeaking telephone.
Through some leap of intuition, Edison knew that he could electromodulate the friction between a small, flat metal tongue and a cylinder of slightly moist chalk rotating beneath the tongue.
The tongue of metal was connected by a short, stiff wire to the centre of a loudspeaking acoustic element.

I’ve tried to draw a diagram of Edison’s loudspeaker using Gimp.

I agree. Thomas Edison’s inventions shaped the modern world.

He invented the phonograph, the first device to record and play back sound, which revolutionized the music industry and entertainment.

His work also contributed to the development of early motion pictures. Thomas Edison and his assistant William Dickson developed the first motion picture camera. His lab created the technology that captured and viewed motion pictures, using 35mm perforated film, which remains a standard.

Hollywood became the center of the film industry because early filmmakers moved there to escape Thomas Edison's patent restrictions.

Many filmmakers moved to Southern California to escape the control and fees of Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, which held many of the key film-related patents and was based out of New York.

 

[Omega Supreme]

My high school electronics instructor had us breadboard and build an AM radio from a kit. He said it would teach us most of electronics, which was mostly analog at the time.

An AM radio works by receiving electromagnetic radio waves that carry sound information through Amplitude Modulation (AM) — where the amplitude (strength) of the radio wave is varied in proportion to the sound signal, while its frequency stays constant.

A radio station takes an audio signal (like someone talking or music).

• It mixes that audio with a carrier wave — a steady, high-frequency electromagnetic wave.
• In AM, the amplitude (height) of the carrier wave changes with the sound:
  • Louder sounds = higher amplitude
  • Softer sounds = lower amplitude
    The frequency of the carrier doesn’t change.

This modulated wave is transmitted by a large antenna, radiating electromagnetic waves through the air.

• These waves travel long distances, especially at night, bouncing off the ionosphere.

Your AM radio does several key jobs:

(a) Antenna
The antenna picks up many radio waves in the air — including the one from the station you want.

(b) Tuning Circuit
Inside the radio, a resonant circuit (a coil and capacitor) selects one frequency (station) out of the many.

• When you turn the dial, you change the circuit’s resonance so it matches that station’s carrier frequency.

(c) Detector / Demodulator
This part strips away the carrier and leaves the audio signal.

• The simplest version is a diode detector, which passes only one half of the AM wave and smooths it out — revealing the original audio.

(d) Amplifier
The audio signal is very weak, so it’s amplified by a transistor or integrated circuit.

(e) Speaker
The amplified signal drives the speaker, which vibrates the air to recreate the original sound.

 

[AnalogKid]

Hollywood became the center of the film industry because early filmmakers moved there to escape Thomas Edison's patent restrictions.

Many filmmakers moved to Southern California to escape the control and fees of Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company, which held many of the key film-related patents and was based out of New York.

Really? US patents apply to all of the states all of the time. Whether or not the patent holder chooses to enforce restrictions is their choice. You can't "escape" licensing fees simply by moving.

"Southern California was also chosen because of its beautiful year-round weather and varied countryside; its topography, semi-arid climate and widespread irrigation gave its landscapes the ability to offer motion picture shooting scenes set in deserts, jungles and great mountains."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Patents_Company#Backlash_and_decline

ak

 

[Sunnysky]

The constancy of the speed of light is not covered in the equations you show, which were BTW *not* Maxwell's.

In 1884, Oliver Heaviside took Maxwell's work, something like 18 equations with 21 variables, condensed and combined some things, and cooked them down to the four equations you show. As shown by the titles, none were Maxwell's work completely. He (through Heaviside) restated equations already known, and tweaked two of them.

In other equations not shown, Maxwell introduced the idea that light, electricity, and magnetism were all variations of the same thing, and provided an introductory mathematical framework for this. Aside from all of that relativity stuff, this is what Einstein picked up and ran with, all the way to Stockholm. His Nobel prize was *not* for the theories of relativity, but for the photo-electric effect.

History of Maxwell's equations - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

ak

I never used Maxwell's Equations in my EE R&D career rather I used Heaviside's discoveries. It's a shame he never got credited because he was not officially an Engineer. But his discoveries were more significant to me.

 

[Omega Supreme]

Here is a schematic of a simple AM (Amplitude Modulation) modulator/mixer circuit that uses a FET (Field Effect Transistor) as a variable resistor and an operational amplifier for gain and carrier mixing.


This circuit modulates an RF carrier (a sine wave oscillator) with a low-frequency modulating signal (like audio). The result is an AM (Amplitude Modulated) output — a carrier whose amplitude varies in step with the modulating signal.

Modulating Input Section (Left side)

Modulating Input Signal: The low-frequency (audio) signal that contains the information you want to transmit.

• Capacitor (C): Couples the AC audio signal to the FET gate while blocking any DC offset.
• Resistor to -Vbias: Provides a DC bias to the FET gate to control its operating point (ensures it works in its linear region as a voltage-controlled resistor).

Purpose:
This section controls how the audio signal voltage affects the FET’s drain-source resistance.

FET as a Voltage-Controlled Resistor

The FET operates in its ohmic (linear) region, where its drain-source resistance R_{DS} changes with the gate-source voltage V_{GS}.

• This resistance acts as R_i — the input resistor for the op-amp.

Effect:
As the modulating signal varies, it changes R_i.

Since op-amp gain = 1 + R_f/R_i, the amplifier’s gain changes in real time with the modulating signal.

So, the amplitude of the carrier (fed into the op-amp) varies according to the audio — that’s amplitude modulation.

Carrier Oscillator (Middle-bottom input)

The carrier oscillator provides a fixed-frequency sine wave (e.g., 455 kHz or 1 MHz).

• It is fed into the non-inverting input of the op-amp.

Purpose:
This is the RF carrier whose amplitude will be modulated.

Operational Amplifier Section (Right side)

The op-amp is configured as a non-inverting amplifier with:

• Feedback resistor R_f
• Input resistor R_i (the FET’s drain-source path)
• Gain equation:

Gain = 1 + R_f/R_i

Since R_i changes with the audio signal → the gain fluctuates in sync with the modulating waveform → the amplitude of the carrier output varies → you get AM output.

AM Output

The output of the op-amp contains the carrier whose amplitude varies according to the input (audio) signal.



This design is a balanced analog AM modulator, using:

A FET as a voltage-controlled resistor (VCR) for gain control

• An op-amp to mix and amplify the carrier
• No need for diode mixers or transformers — simple, linear, and effective at low to moderate RF frequencies.

 

[AnalogKid]

I never used Maxwell's Equations in my EE R&D career rather I used Heaviside's discoveries. It's a shame he never got credited because he was not officially an Engineer. But his discoveries were more significant to me.

BTW, he *invented* coaxial cable.

ak

 

[Omega Supreme]

Digital has always seemed like magic to me.

Analog intuitively seems like it would be better because you get the full signal.

In converting it to Digital it seems like you’re losing information because you’re sampling the Analog signal, which means you’re only getting pieces of the full signal. And what you end up with is an approximation of the original.

The magic is that it ends up being better.