[LAD] Smallest, simplest, silliest SDR?

[Jörn Nettingsmeier]

On 02/28/2010 04:50 AM, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Saturday 27 February 2010, Folderol wrote:
>> Sounds suspiciously like some form of quadrature demodulator. Rather
>> like GEC/Sobel introduced with their 1018 TV chassis in the 1960s.
>> Oh how we laughed ...
>
> Why were you laughing?  Zenith did this, with a self excited circuit, using a
> type 6BN6 gated beam tube to recover the audio directly from the 4.5 mhz
> inter carrier frequency, starting in the fall of '51 with the intro of the
> '52 model year.  It worked fairly well too.  Stable, not sensitive to the
> fine tuning setting, so folks out in the fringes could tune for a slightly
> better if not as sharp a pix.
...
> Yeah, I'll plead guilty to being an old fart, 75 now.  And its been one hell
> of a ride to get to this day.  Mostly enjoyable, I'd do it again almost
> exactly as it happened.

what a story!
i didn't understand any of it, but i will sit down tonight, wade my way 
through everything wikipedia knows about broadcasting technology, over a 
glass of red fine, and try to appreciate it in full.

great to see the breadth of backgrounds here on LAD.

best,

jörn