Are the old Radio Electric, Electronic Illistrated Magazines any good?

[gary350]

Are these old magazine worth having??? I have magazines from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. I am a pack rat I have too much stuff it all needs to go. I pulled out a few copies and they say Radio Electronic. I believe before that the name was Electronic Illustrated or maybe that was a different magazine. And I seem to remember before that the name was Popular Electronics. I have boxs and boxes of magazines I hate to trash them but I don't want them anymore. I advertised them on Ebay several times all the magizines I could get in a Flat Rate box for $9.99 but no one bid. Now I am sorting through the magazines to see if I have some marked that I might want to keep. If these are no good for anything they are going in the trash can. These are from the days when magazines had project a person could build. Now days magazines are 99% advertisements no wonder magazine sales have dropped who wants to buy advertisements. I bet all these old projects are out of date and worthless.

Here is a cool project Radio Electronic Nov. 1987 the Blue Box. This allows you to make FREE long distance phone calls any where in the world. It is very educational to learn how the telephone company computer systems works and about the tones but I never built it. I bet the computer system is not exactly the same these days.

When I was young I had a lot of fun building many of the projects in the magazines but I bet most of that stuff is long past being out of date. Some were fun like the Big Ear, FM transmitter, and others. There all going to the trash unless someone can give me a good reason not to.

 

[audioguru]

I also have lots of old electronics magazines that are useless today. I haven't looked at them for about 30 years.
They taught me a lot. Now the internet teaches a lot.

 

[canadaelk]

Maybee a local Radio Museum will take them? E

 

[ericgibbs]

hi Gary,
There are research/lecturers who collect very old radio and electronic magazines.

I had a lot of pre WW2 Camms Practical Wireless and other very old electronics magazines, I gave them all, together with my old valve/tube types, to a guy who lectures on the History of Electronics, perhaps someone at your local University maybe interested.

 

[carbonzit]

I also have lots of old electronics magazines that are useless today. I haven't looked at them for about 30 years.
They taught me a lot. Now the internet teaches a lot.

Don't you see the contradiction in your statements? On the one hand, you give credit for those magazines teaching you a lot, but then claim that they're "useless" today.

Now, it's true that some of those old mags are going to have articles that use obsolete components (like vacuum tubes or old geranium transistors), or even obsolete techniques (like Wien bridges made with automobile lamps). However, the underlying electronic principles haven't changed. You could still learn a lot from them. So I'd say they're potentially quite valuable. Maybe not in $$$, but I'd love nothing more than delving into a stack of vintage electronics mags.

I'll bet you'd even find some circuits that would still be useful today, and adaptable to the parts available now.

 

[transistor495]

I also have lots of old electronics magazines that are useless today. I haven't looked at them for about 30 years.
They taught me a lot.!

Care to parcel them to India?

 

[carbonzit]

Yes! That would be the right thing to do. Get rid of all those "useless today" publications!

 

[cr0sh]

Are these old magazine worth having??? I have magazines from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. I am a pack rat I have too much stuff it all needs to go. I pulled out a few copies and they say Radio Electronic. I believe before that the name was Electronic Illustrated or maybe that was a different magazine. And I seem to remember before that the name was Popular Electronics. I have boxs and boxes of magazines I hate to trash them but I don't want them anymore. I advertised them on Ebay several times all the magizines I could get in a Flat Rate box for $9.99 but no one bid. Now I am sorting through the magazines to see if I have some marked that I might want to keep. If these are no good for anything they are going in the trash can. These are from the days when magazines had project a person could build. Now days magazines are 99% advertisements no wonder magazine sales have dropped who wants to buy advertisements. I bet all these old projects are out of date and worthless.

Here is a cool project Radio Electronic Nov. 1987 the Blue Box. This allows you to make FREE long distance phone calls any where in the world. It is very educational to learn how the telephone company computer systems works and about the tones but I never built it. I bet the computer system is not exactly the same these days.

When I was young I had a lot of fun building many of the projects in the magazines but I bet most of that stuff is long past being out of date. Some were fun like the Big Ear, FM transmitter, and others. There all going to the trash unless someone can give me a good reason not to.

I'm personally interested in the ones from the 60s and 70s - PM me, and let's talk...?

 

[gary350]

I'm personally interested in the ones from the 60s and 70s - PM me, and let's talk...?

I went through the magazines and pulled out a few that I wanted to keep. I donated them all to the Goodwill store about an hour ago. It was fun looking through them one page at a time. I picked out 14 magazines to keep the rest are gone. All the Popular Science and Popular Mechanics Magazines from the first issue are online page by page I wonder if these electronic magazines are online too.

 

[count.zero]

My son and I are just getting started in Electronics so I'd like to buy some of these old magazines if anyone wants to sell some at a reasonable price. The articles are nice but I also enjoy reading the old ads.

 

[atferrari]

About a year ago I started to revisit all articles dealing with theory from my huge collection.

Still useful as in the past. Problem is to select those ones and bin the rest.

 

[Distrautdaughter]

I'm personally interested in the ones from the 60s and 70s - PM me, and let's talk...?

I have a collection of vintage electronics magazines and books from the 60’s . Are you interested?

 

[AnalogKid]

In a PDF / pad world, the physical copies might be useless; but the information is priceless.

Electronics Illustrated, Radio-Electronics, and Popular Electronics were three competing magazines.

The vast majority of just about everything is here:

https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Electronics _Illustrated_Master_Page.htm

This is the EI page, but you can go backwards through the link to the master index. This site is awesome.

ak

 

[Ratchit]

In a PDF / pad world, the physical copies might be useless; but the information is priceless.

... This site is awesome.

ak

Truer words were never spoken. On another note, I have a folder which contains dated material I call "Old Gold". It seems that some of the more interesting concepts and techniques pertaining to electronics are not easily found in the more modern journals and textbooks anymore.

Ratch