Some of you "oldtimers" might have cut your teeth on the old DeForest oscilloscope like this one. What with it's massive 2 inch CRT and a bandwidth of around 1 or 2 MHz, you were the envy of your peers. If the specs didn't impress them, just look at all the knobs... I picked this one up at the Spokane hamfest for a dollar. The ham I bought it from, K7CTS, offered to mail the schematic to me but I felt bad about having him pay the postage (which will probably run more than I gave him for the 'scope). He told me that he and his dad both built one of these for an electronics course or something like that. Who knows WHY I buy this stuff? Maybe it's the warm glow from the tubes or the smell of burning bleeder resistors. Maybe it's the hypnotic effect of a Lissajou display or maybe I just bought it so I could have it on my Web page?
Here is one unit that I DON'T have, I don't know where I'd put it if I DID (and I KNOW my wife would object if it came with the operator). This photo was scanned from the back of (I believe) a Raytheon catalog and depicts (I assume) a quality control employee running a series of tests on one of their vacuum tubes. You never saw one of THESE in your neighborhood Radio Shack store. I'm sure some folks could have a lot of fun with a tester like this one, it must have measured just about every parameter a tube could display. It would be a real show stopper at your local hamfest. Ah, to dream...