Electronics History: The Digi-Key Corporation and Ham Radio

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While stubling around Wikipedia the other day, I came to the entry about the Digi-Key Corporation.  Digi-Key is now the fifth largest electronics distributors in the country.  I have ordered from them many times for both personal and business purchases.  The following bit in the Wikipedia article caught my eye:

Ronald Stordahl founded the company in 1972 and its name is a reference to the “Digi-Keyer Kit”, a digital electronic keyer kit that he developed and marketed to amateur radio enthusiasts. He continues to privately own the company.[2]

To verify this I followed the footnote (link left intact in the quote above).  This took me to the Digi-Key history page on the Digi-Key website.  Sure enough:

It was Dr. Ronald A. Stordahl’s interest in ham radio that provided the springboard for what has become Digi-Key Corporation today.

While in college he assembled and began selling a digital electronic keyer kit for sending radiotelegraph code for ham radio operators. It was called the Digi-Key.

After obtaining his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Stordahl returned to his hometown of Thief River Falls, Minnesota. The keyer kit was discontinued and he began selling electronic components in 1972. The Digi-Key “Keyer” is long gone, but Digi-Key Corporation has become one of the fastest growing electronic component distributors in the world.

Further searching took me to an article about Digi-Key CEO Mark Larson on the Radio-Electronics.com Website:

Can you tell us a little of how Digi-Key started?
The real beginning of Digi-Key was about 1969. Ron Stordahl was a Ham Radio enthusiast and, while a graduate student at the university, developed an electronic keying device for sending Morse code which utilized integrated circuits and other electronic components. He decided to sell this device in the form of a kit to other Ham Radio hobbyists. The kit included the components and an etched circuit board on which one could solder the components. He advertised this kit as the “Digi-Keyer.” Although he sold a reasonable number of kits, he sold far less “Digi-Keyers” than he had planned. He decided to stop selling this kit, but was committed for many components for kits that were never sold. In an effort to recover his cost for these excess parts, he decided that he would try to sell them by advertising in magazines. This marked the beginning of Digi-Key Corporation in 1972 as a distributor of electronic components. With a modest inventory, Stordahl expanded his marketing plan to supplement magazine advertising with Digi-Key’s one-page, typewritten, and mimeographed “catalogue.”

 

(Published from DFW, Texas)

Newer (than below) Editor’s Note (12/5):
My friend Ron Kritzman pointed me toward an article in the 1968 QST on page 22 titled “An Integrated-Circuit Electronic Keyer” by Richard Halvorson WØZHN and Ronald Stordahl (then-KØUXQ).  Still no picture of the Digi-Keyer.

 

Editor’s Note:  I tried to find a picture of the original Digi-Keyer Kit.  All I found was a product from MicroHam, of which I am reasonably sure it wasn’t Stordahl’s design since it has USB.  If anybody has one of these original kits, or at least a photograph, let me know, I’d like to add a picture.

In the News: Trouble in Mecca? Dayton Hamvention Venue Hara Arena in Financial Trouble

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My my my.  What a surprise!  WDTN TV-2 News in Dayton says that the crumbling Hara Arena (home of the Dayton Hamvention for over 50 years) is finally facing financial problems.

I’m not being fair here.  Yes the place is a dump.  There is not a white ceiling tile in the place.  The parking lot asphalt has not been resurfaced since the Roman empire.  But they have some good excuses.  Mainly, since it is a privately owned facility, it is difficult to compete with other venues that receive tax subsidies.

Hara’s Director of Marketing says it is tough for Hara to compete with venues like the Nutter Center, but they’re keeping a positive attitude.

Hara generated $34-million into the community through 239 events last year.

“As taxpayers, we’re competing against facilities that are subsidized by tax dollars and because of that we are struggling to compete. The primary challenges are that we need renovation dollars and the ownership model needs to be changed,” said Karen Wampler, Director of Marketing at Hara Arena.

Wampler told 2 NEWS they are working with a company called Venuworks that specializes in restoring event venues.

Read more

Crosstown Traffic: Hackaday “Retrotachtacular” – 1978 Bell Systems video about Mobile Telephone Service

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This week’s “Retrotachtacular” on Hackaday features a 1978 Bell System video about the Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS):

This gem from the AT&T Archive does a good job of explaining the first-generation cellular technology that AT&T called Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS). The hexagon-cellular network design was first conceived at Bell Labs in 1947. After a couple of decades spent pestering the FCC, AT&T was awarded the 850MHz band in the late 1970s. It was this decision coupled with the decades worth of Bell System technical improvements that gave cellular technology the bandwidth and power to really come into its own.

AT&T’s primary goals for the AMPS network were threefold: to provide more service to more people, to improve service quality, and to lower the cost to subscribers. Early mobile network design gave us the Mobile Service Area, or MSA. Each high-elevation transmitter could serve a 20-mile radius of subscribers, a range which constituted one MSA. In the mid-1940s, only 21 channels could be used in the 35MHz and 150MHz band allocations. The 450MHz band was introduced in 1952, provided another 12 channels.

The FCC’s allocation opened a whopping 666 channels in the neighborhood of 850MHz. Bell Labs’ hexagonal innovation sub-divided the MSAs into cells, each with a radius of up to ten miles.

This is a cool video.  Click through to Hackaday to watch it and read more.

 

(Published from DFW, Texas)

In the News: AP Wire-Iowa men keepers of fading communication mode

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The Hawk Eye newspaper in Burlington, Iowa published a story last week (the article is behind a paywall, luckily you can views it on the AP Wire for free) about Sam Burrell KØAFN and Mike Rosenblatt KØBMW (the article really butchered the callsigns but your intrepid blog editor was able to search QRZ.com for the correction).  Although I disagree a bit with the terms “dwindling” and “fading” when it comes to the hobby (there are nearly 724,000 licensed operators in the US–and that seems to increase every year), the article was pretty interesting.

In comfortable basement rooms, surrounded by dials, buttons and knobs, Sam Burrell and Mike Rosenblatt each has the world as his fingertips.

Literally.

Using radio waves bounced off the ionosphere, a conversation with a fellow ham in South America, California or some remote island in the Indian Ocean, is just a frequency adjustment away, The Hawk Eye reported.

“You never know who is listening on the radio,” Rosenblatt said, explaining that during a conversation with a friend earlier this year, a ham from Tokyo chimed in.

But in the age of the smartphone, the amateur radio network is a dwindling hobby whose aging practitioners are the keepers of a fading but potentially still vital means of communication.

If the power grid goes down, if a mass ejection from the sun wipes out electronic equipment all over North America, or if the New Madrid fault someday wreaks havoc across the middle of the country, it will be people like KA AFN and KA BMV [KØAFN and KØBMW (AD8BC EDIT)] — Burrell and Rosenblatt, as their call signs respectively identify them — who will be able to receive and disseminate information from the outside world.

Fun for now and then.

Se the rest of the story here.

(Published from DFW, Texas)

Projects: Arduino-controlled Solar Charge Controller

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Front panel display from Pascal Foglietta’s Arduino-controlled Solar Battery Charger Controller

So I was cruising Instructables again today.  Once in a while, while weeding out the fairly boring crap like the thousand-and-one uses for Sugru or 3D printing an entire person, you find a real gem.  While I am not a tree-hugger by any remote stretch of anybody’s imagination, I am a ham radio operator, and having a good source of DC power away from any kind of commercial hookup can be important, and I have been interested in solar and battery projects on-and-off for quite a while. 

Stripboard for Pascal Foglietta’s solar charge controller

Pascal Foglietta from Sydney, Australia has put up an article–er, Instructable–about his Arduino-controlled solar battery charger controller that is a real work of art — not only the finished product itself (the protoboards, display, and enclosure are extremely professional-looking), but the documentation that goes along with it.  The instructions, illustrations, and schematics makes this project better suited for a magazine like Make: Magazine or Nuts and Volts than an Instructables article.  And while I’m getting sick of hearing about the Internet of Things (where everything you own needs to connect to everything else that you own), this project does a nice job of putting all of it’s data in human readable form on the Internet.

Here are the specifications of Pascal’s project (after the jump): Read more

Hams In Space: Samantha Cristoforetti IZ1UDF is new ISS resident Amateur Radio operator

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Amateur Radio Newsline report 1946 for November 28 (Audio (@5:15)|Text) reports that Italian astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti IZ1UDF has safely arrived at the International Space Station:

Ham radio has returned at the International Space Station.
This with the arrival of European Space Agency
Astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, eye-zed-one-U-D-F, after a
5 hour and 45 minute trip that began at the Bikenour
Cosmodrone in Kazakhstan.

Cristoforetti made the trip along with United States
Astronaut Terry Virts and Russian Cosmonaut Anton
Shkaplerov. The three new arrivals were welcomed to the
orbiting outpost by Commander Barry Wilmore along with
Cosmonauts Yelena Serova and Alexander Samokutyaev. Virts,
Shkaplerov, and Cristoforetti will remain aboard the station
until mid-May. The current crew I slated to return to Earth
in early March.

(Published from DFW, Texas)

Crosstown Traffic: KB6NU explaines why the first hacker in history was an amateur radio operator

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My friend Dan KB6NU posted this supporting evidence that he found on the Royal Institution website that a radio amateur was one of the first hackers to successfully hack a “secure” radio system:

I’ve often maintained that amateur radio operators were the first hackers. Now, I have some supporting evidence.

As reported in this post on the Royal Institution website, a public demonstration of Marconi’s wireless communication system, aka radio, was hacked by a British magician. Apparently, Marconi was touting his system as not only being able to send messages over long distances, but as also being secure. Well, now we know that radio transmissions are anything but secure, but they didn’t know that back in 1903.

So, when a public demonstration was set up at Great Britain’s Royal Institution, a British magician and inventor, Nevil Maskelyne, was hired to “hack” into the demo. Before Marconi could send his message from his Cornwall station to the receiving station set up at the Royal Institution, Maskelyne sent the message, “RATS RATS RATS from his transmitting station, presumably somewhere near the Royal Institution. This was picked up by the receiving station, thereby demonstrating that Marconi’s wireless system was anything but secure.

Thanks for that interesting post Dan!

 

(Published from 30,000 feet over the southeast corner of Oklahoma)

Crosstown Traffic: Adafruit blog features website with EVERY issue of Popular Electronics Magazine (1954-1982) in .PDF format for FREE download

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The Adafruit blog turned me on to this website which has EVERY issue of Popular Electronics magazine available for free .PDF download from their first issue in October 1954 through the last issue in October 1982 (right before they changed their name to Computers and Electronics).

Also available on this site are almost all of the issues of Radio Electronics, most of the first ten years of BYTE Magazine, and a number of other electronics hobby magazines.

Enjoy!

 

(Published from Chicago, IL)

In the News: Tower fight pits federal PRB-1 pre-emption against Napa, California planning commission

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Here we go again.  As we talk about expanding the FCC’s PRB-1 amateur radio antenna preemption to homeowner associations and covenants and deed restrictions, here comes a classic ham operator-vs-city fight that will likely end up with a lawsuit and the city as a loser.  From the Napa Valley Register:

Since the longtime amateur radio enthusiast raised the spidery metal mast in April, some homeowners have attacked it for spoiling their views, and others claim the antenna has even disrupted their electronics – or, in one case, disabled a woman’s electric wheelchair.

But their efforts to fight the mast in their midst has bumped against federal law Hullquist argues protects his right to build and use the antenna, even without a city permit.

On Thursday, the city Planning Commission granted him a use permit for the ham radio antenna – but with limitations including a requirement to lower the mast to 21 feet between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. to avoid intruding on his neighbors’ views. (The city allowed an exemption to transmit during a local emergency.) Hullquist also was barred from operating his transmitter while the antenna is retracted. (Emphasis mine — AD8BC)

Afterward, Hullquist promised to appeal his case to the City Council – which also is scheduled to hear a counter-appeal from an opponent of the antenna.

The decision continues a seven-month stalemate pitting Coombs Street homeowners – who say the antenna also disfigures the Napa Abajo-Fuller Park Historic District that includes the street – against Hullquist, who has argued a Federal Communications Commission memorandum from 1985 blocks cities from passing laws that make ham radio use impossible.

In as much as the city is overstepping it’s bounds here, the statement I emphasized above in the quote is beyond scary:

Hullquist also was barred from operating his transmitter while the antenna is retracted.

The city has absolutely no authority to bar him from transmitting his radio on his property.  This is purely federal FCC jurisdiction here.

This will be one of those fun cases to follow.  We’ll keep up with it here.

 

(Published from Chicago, IL)

Crosstown Traffic: KB6NU talks “1Nxxxx” and “2Nxxxx” diode and transistor part numbers.

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Dan KB6NU posts interesting information from Wikipedia about how diodes and transistors got their “1Nxxxx” and “2Nxxxx” part numbers.  Turns out these numbers spawned from the old vacuum tube part numbering systems:

The early work began as a part numbering system for devices which became popular in the 1960s. The first semiconductor devices, such as the 1N23 silicon point contact diode, were still designated in the old RMA tube designation system, where the “1” stood for “No filament/heater” and the “N” stood for “crystal rectifier”. The first RMA digit thus was re-allocated from “heater power” to “p-n junction count” to form the new EIA/JEDEC EIA-370 standard; for example, the 1N4001 rectifier diode and 2N2222 transistor part numbers came from EIA-370. They are still popular today. In February, 1982, JEDEC issued JESD370B, superseding the original EIA-370 and introducing a new letter symbol “C” that denotes the die version, as opposed to “N”, now meaning the packaged version. The Japanese JIS semiconductor designation system employs a similar pattern. JEDEC later developed a numbering system for integrated circuits, but this did not gain acceptance in the semiconductor industry. The European Pro Electron semiconductor numbering system originated in a similar way from the older Mullard–Philips tube designation.

Thanks, Dan, for sharing that interesting fact!

 

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