It's amazing what hoops some engineers would jump through with electro-mechanical devices that became dinosaurs a few years later when some other engineers figured out how to take the mechanical out of the process.
And then "some other engineers" re-created mechanical action in CRTs... they started with memory tubes, then squaring tubes, logarithming tubes, all sorts of computing CRTs, enough to guide a cruise missile without anything digital. And it was also forgotten in a decade or two.
And then the way people get stupid about new things they need to do, instead of looking back with at least some understanding that has been passed down is completely ridiculous!
Great work and thanks for preserving and sharing Bina-View, along with all those other quirky classic displays. The repair gave a great insight into the 1 of 64 decoding, all implemented with solenoids and notch coded plates- in the end I could clearly see how it all worked and really appreciate what can be achieved without semis or even tubes!
When I was a soldier in the 70's I worked in commo, we had our comsec vault in the Regimental Headquarters, our commo officer wanted an electronic display he could just turn a few knob on to find the proper radio frequencies for different radio nets instead of having to thumb through the SOI. So myself and a couple of other electronic nuts sat down and tried to create one. This was back before the IC's were available and all of our wiring was done via diode steering. After about a month we came up with a system that worked, sort of and only for one net as the frequencies rotated monthly and having to re-program it was a real bitch. The Major played with our "frequency box" for about a week when the security officer stopped by and he showed it off to him. Since the frequencies were contained in the Signal Operating Instructions which were stamped CONFIDENTIAL, the Security Officer ordered the box destroyed and forbade us building another. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted and I learned a great deal in the building.
6.3V because that was still a common voltage for lamps, based on old valve filaments being 6.3V for non series filaments, and thus a lot of displays used this voltage, as you got a reasonably bright light source, with a very small filament, and thus for display use a very compact light source, so you got most of the light output into the display. Plus longer life over higher voltages, as the filament is a lot thicker, so improved shock resistance. You still find a lot of equipment with a 24V rail for industrial relay drive, but also with a 6V rail as well for lamp use, especially in industrial switches, as you still find a lot of them with 6v lamps in them as standard, and thus a separate lamp supply, even if the lamp is being controlled by a relay using a 24V coil. Though have seen some oddball ones that used a 36Vsupply, which is a real pain to get parts for, as most industrial relays and controllers use either 24 or 48V coils. Luckily for me there was a 12VAC tap on the power transformer, so I could get a 24VAC supply to use standard 24VAC relays, though it did mean a little bit of extra work to bring in a new wire to make this the new common for the relays. Still left the 36VAC lamps in place, lower voltage they last a lot longer in service.
i agree about the advantage of the thicker filament. That was the first thing I thought of. Lamp reliability would likely have been high on the list of requirements.
Fran, I'm not sure, but I think the first "i" in "Bina-view" is probably a long "i", since I'm pretty sure the name is a contraction of "Binary-View", because its input is in binary rather than N separate signals for each segment of an N-segment display. So probably pronounced "bye-na-view".
@@FranLab Damn, Fran. Way to make a regular viewer, for years now, feel unwelcome. You need to work on that impulse you have to be snarky at the drop of a hat. Anyway, call it whatever you want, I'm unsubbing.
@@Felice_Enellen I agree with you. That's quite the shitty way to respond. It was a suggestion, couched in "maybe, kinda, sorta" language that did not at all come off snarky. Fran can fuck right off along with her old-ass numbers.
It appears complicated, but once you separate its functions to their basic workings, it's actually a pretty simple device. A clever one. Discount the assembly, and the base parts are dirt cheap.
Very interesting. The solenoid and slotted lever mechanism is more or less the same idea as a teletype. Also, I wonder if they ever did a segment display; with 16 plates, one for each segment, and some decoding logic (a diode matrix perhaps), you could draw the same number of characters with quite a few less plates.
Imagine a large display of those in operation....it would sound like the Seaview's computer in " Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea"... The oldest digital display I have seen is from an " annunciator" system two jobs ago. Essentially a wired pager. Four digit electromechanical display from the late 1920s. At my last job, they had a huge indicator panel for a tube delivery system . All of the indicators were 120 volt miniature bayonet lamps ( 120MB) ...except four, that were 28 volt. No idea why this was done. Thanks for this video...truly unique display. Buncha people with slide rules back in the day designed this....
6.2Volts bajonet sounds like an old bike or carlamp. Easy to get, pretty much standard (now) many years ago. The bigger sizes were for the cars and the smaller are still in use in many bikes that are 10 years old or older here. Nice to see it in big from that lab.
Plus I have to think a 24V lamp would be unnecessarily bright and meanwhile also produce a lot more heat to dissipate from a display that's most likely sealed away in a larger unit.
I thought you were using a microcontroller like the Raspberry Pi Pico ,or an Arduino to control your Binaveiw. Well who needs microcontrollers..😂! I believe the display was shown in the old military or NASA movies in the Missile launch control center during the count-down process. Well thanks for showing us a blast from the past. Great video,
Made from the same stuff as some vintage furniture. When customers bring in a piece and ask "what sort of wood is is made from?" if we're unsure, it's Bina. "Bina?" they ask. "Yeah, Bina tree at some point."
I might be talking out of the wrong end of my anatomy but, the reason for running the bulb off of the 6.3V/heater supply could be because the heater supply is more stable, where as the solenoid power supply could vary depending how many solenoids where engaged. If, for example you had three BINA Views in a line that would be 18 solenoids.with anything from 0 to 18 of them engaged at any one time, all running of an unregulated power supply. This might be OK for the solenoids but not so good for a light bulb, or the valve heater elements either! I suspect that this is why the solenoids have their own supply. I also suspect thet the solenoids where 24V and not 6.3V is because the higher voltage/lower currant of 24V coils where easier to interface the valves... maybe some sort of gas discharge device???
Don’t know if I asked this, is this the type of display that was used as scorekeeping on the consoles of the old jeopardy that first ran from 1964-1975 with art Fleming. If not what sort of display was used, looks very close.
6.3volts was the voltage of the pp9 transistor radio batteries back in the day and flashlights used them as well, old vintage motorcycles had 6 volt electrics for the headlights etc so the voltage was popular
This is an interesting antique! These devices are likely of historic significance (wouldn't be surprised to find they were in use at White Sands or Alamagordo...)
I think it will be much better first to lift up the whole pack of plates and then to select stencil needed by selector. After the stencil is selected we need to switch off lift-up coil. After this we can switch off the selector coils. It might reduce blades and stencils wear.
Cool. University of Pennsylvania, my neck of the woods. I am up in the Lehigh Valley just south of Center Valley. Really nice area. More built up, but back in the 70s it was all farms. We had lots of local dairy cows and local milk and ice cream that was the best ever I miss seeing all the cows and barns. But still a nice rural area.
1600 views and 250 👍 (for now), what is wrong with people?. It seems that the vast majority ignores that the simple act of supporting the channel by pressing a small button helps enormously the content producers, how ungrateful some people are. Good job Miss Fran, I only give you the suggestion of activating automatic translation, I speak English without problems, but there are many in Spain and Latin America who do not. Thank you.
I think you should bite the bullet and make clickbait like thumbnails and use the phrase rarest display in the title. Big red "Is this the only one? right on the thumbnail.
Thanks for going back in and repairing it:)
It's amazing what hoops some engineers would jump through with electro-mechanical devices that became dinosaurs a few years later when some other engineers figured out how to take the mechanical out of the process.
And then "some other engineers" re-created mechanical action in CRTs... they started with memory tubes, then squaring tubes, logarithming tubes, all sorts of computing CRTs, enough to guide a cruise missile without anything digital. And it was also forgotten in a decade or two.
And then the way people get stupid about new things they need to do, instead of looking back with at least some understanding that has been passed down is completely ridiculous!
It is a beautiful device. We must respect these people, who invented these mechanical displays. 🤩
Is revisit of the bina-view? I remember you had a similar display in an earlier video.
Great work and thanks for preserving and sharing Bina-View, along with all those other quirky classic displays. The repair gave a great insight into the 1 of 64 decoding, all implemented with solenoids and notch coded plates- in the end I could clearly see how it all worked and really appreciate what can be achieved without semis or even tubes!
Thanks for the support!
When I was a soldier in the 70's I worked in commo, we had our comsec vault in the Regimental Headquarters, our commo officer wanted an electronic display he could just turn a few knob on to find the proper radio frequencies for different radio nets instead of having to thumb through the SOI. So myself and a couple of other electronic nuts sat down and tried to create one. This was back before the IC's were available and all of our wiring was done via diode steering. After about a month we came up with a system that worked, sort of and only for one net as the frequencies rotated monthly and having to re-program it was a real bitch. The Major played with our "frequency box" for about a week when the security officer stopped by and he showed it off to him. Since the frequencies were contained in the Signal Operating Instructions which were stamped CONFIDENTIAL, the Security Officer ordered the box destroyed and forbade us building another. Ah well, it was fun while it lasted and I learned a great deal in the building.
North Hollywood is my neck of the woods. Woot! IEE!
6.3V because that was still a common voltage for lamps, based on old valve filaments being 6.3V for non series filaments, and thus a lot of displays used this voltage, as you got a reasonably bright light source, with a very small filament, and thus for display use a very compact light source, so you got most of the light output into the display. Plus longer life over higher voltages, as the filament is a lot thicker, so improved shock resistance. You still find a lot of equipment with a 24V rail for industrial relay drive, but also with a 6V rail as well for lamp use, especially in industrial switches, as you still find a lot of them with 6v lamps in them as standard, and thus a separate lamp supply, even if the lamp is being controlled by a relay using a 24V coil.
Though have seen some oddball ones that used a 36Vsupply, which is a real pain to get parts for, as most industrial relays and controllers use either 24 or 48V coils. Luckily for me there was a 12VAC tap on the power transformer, so I could get a 24VAC supply to use standard 24VAC relays, though it did mean a little bit of extra work to bring in a new wire to make this the new common for the relays. Still left the 36VAC lamps in place, lower voltage they last a lot longer in service.
i agree about the advantage of the thicker filament. That was the first thing I thought of. Lamp reliability would likely have been high on the list of requirements.
What wonders have been wrought by engineers and explained by another. Thanks, Fran.
Fran, I'm not sure, but I think the first "i" in "Bina-view" is probably a long "i", since I'm pretty sure the name is a contraction of "Binary-View", because its input is in binary rather than N separate signals for each segment of an N-segment display. So probably pronounced "bye-na-view".
I think it is pronounced however I pronounce it - seeing that I own the only one. But feel free to refer to yours however you please.
@@FranLab Damn, Fran. Way to make a regular viewer, for years now, feel unwelcome. You need to work on that impulse you have to be snarky at the drop of a hat. Anyway, call it whatever you want, I'm unsubbing.
@@Felice_Enellen I agree with you. That's quite the shitty way to respond. It was a suggestion, couched in "maybe, kinda, sorta" language that did not at all come off snarky. Fran can fuck right off along with her old-ass numbers.
@@FranLab Way to prove the type of person you truly are. Good luck with things.
What a strange exchange. Thank you anonymous internet commenters.
The thrill of getting it all working. Awesome!
The opening and the digital display is reminiscent of THX-1138 with Robert Duval !
Love that film! (It's a pity Lucas mucked with it before releasing it on DVD. I wish he'd leave well enough alone. Sigh.)
Looks like something that could be fun to 3D print. :-)
Ingenious engineering. I love geeking out on these videos.
It appears complicated, but once you separate its functions to their basic workings, it's actually a pretty simple device. A clever one. Discount the assembly, and the base parts are dirt cheap.
I saw this the first time it was posted.
Still watched it.
Very interesting. The solenoid and slotted lever mechanism is more or less the same idea as a teletype. Also, I wonder if they ever did a segment display; with 16 plates, one for each segment, and some decoding logic (a diode matrix perhaps), you could draw the same number of characters with quite a few less plates.
Imagine a large display of those in operation....it would sound like the Seaview's computer in " Voyage To The Bottom of the Sea"...
The oldest digital display I have seen is from an " annunciator" system two jobs ago. Essentially a wired pager. Four digit electromechanical display from the late 1920s.
At my last job, they had a huge indicator panel for a tube delivery system . All of the indicators were 120 volt miniature bayonet lamps ( 120MB) ...except four, that were 28 volt. No idea why this was done.
Thanks for this video...truly unique display. Buncha people with slide rules back in the day designed this....
6.2Volts bajonet sounds like an old bike or carlamp. Easy to get, pretty much standard (now) many years ago. The bigger sizes were for the cars and the smaller are still in use in many bikes that are 10 years old or older here.
Nice to see it in big from that lab.
Plus I have to think a 24V lamp would be unnecessarily bright and meanwhile also produce a lot more heat to dissipate from a display that's most likely sealed away in a larger unit.
@@Felice_Enellen Well, a 3Watt 6V lamp is producing the same amount of heat as a 24V 3Watt lamp though;-)
I thought you were using a microcontroller like the Raspberry Pi Pico ,or an Arduino to control your Binaveiw. Well who needs microcontrollers..😂!
I believe the display was shown in the old military or NASA movies in the Missile launch control center during the count-down process. Well thanks for showing us a blast from the past.
Great video,
good job thank you
I swear I thought you had done this before
We must be time travelers. I remember it too. I knew before she opened it exactly what was inside. Maybe it's a rerun.
Made from the same stuff as some vintage furniture. When customers bring in a piece and ask "what sort of wood is is made from?" if we're unsure, it's Bina.
"Bina?" they ask. "Yeah, Bina tree at some point."
But Fran what is different to all the other Bina views that your posted some time ago? Is this a re-post?
BINA-Fusion of two BINA nuclei!
I might be talking out of the wrong end of my anatomy but, the reason for running the bulb off of the 6.3V/heater supply could be because the heater supply is more stable, where as the solenoid power supply could vary depending how many solenoids where engaged. If, for example you had three BINA Views in a line that would be 18 solenoids.with anything from 0 to 18 of them engaged at any one time, all running of an unregulated power supply. This might be OK for the solenoids but not so good for a light bulb, or the valve heater elements either! I suspect that this is why the solenoids have their own supply. I also suspect thet the solenoids where 24V and not 6.3V is because the higher voltage/lower currant of 24V coils where easier to interface the valves... maybe some sort of gas discharge device???
Don’t know if I asked this, is this the type of display that was used as scorekeeping on the consoles of the old jeopardy that first ran from 1964-1975 with art Fleming. If not what sort of display was used, looks very close.
6.3volts was the voltage of the pp9 transistor radio batteries back in the day and flashlights used them as well, old vintage motorcycles had 6 volt electrics for the headlights etc so the voltage was popular
This is an interesting antique! These devices are likely of historic significance (wouldn't be surprised to find they were in use at White Sands or Alamagordo...)
How does one clear out a lab anyways?
I think it will be much better first to lift up the whole pack of plates and then to select stencil needed by selector. After the stencil is selected we need to switch off lift-up coil. After this we can switch off the selector coils.
It might reduce blades and stencils wear.
For not going to fix it, you sure, well, fixed the hell out of it!!
6.3 and 24. Tubes and relays.
Thankyou for the great videos Fran ,I like the vintage lights and displays and electromechanical doodas that you find to show us 👍📺
26 letters, 10 digits border, + - and black that's your 40 cards. function is somewhat similar to a crossbar relay.
I got a kick out of watching this again. These videos are what brought me to the channel originally.
Uh-oh! There goes the warranty! Again!
Is it UNICODE OLD teletype?
Why wouldnt you try to fix it? Doesn't look nearly as daunting as a standby horizon gyroscope, and I've put lots of those back together...
(Comment made in first half of video)
Cool. University of Pennsylvania, my neck of the woods. I am up in the Lehigh Valley just south of Center Valley.
Really nice area.
More built up, but back in the 70s it was all farms.
We had lots of local dairy cows and local milk and ice cream that was the best ever
I miss seeing all the cows and barns.
But still a nice rural area.
If you had anough of them, each could be a pixel in an array, say 300x400, the chattering TV.
You wouldn't happen to have good pictures of all the characters would you? Would be amazing for animation projects or video games ^-^
I LOVE this rare displays and things !!!!!!!!.
Thank you!
42 plates, wow, I hate to think how the mechanical decoding works to lift a single plate
This device has a very elegant operating principle, thanks for telling us about it.
1600 views and 250 👍 (for now), what is wrong with people?. It seems that the vast majority ignores that the simple act of supporting the channel by pressing a small button helps enormously the content producers, how ungrateful some people are. Good job Miss Fran, I only give you the suggestion of activating automatic translation, I speak English without problems, but there are many in Spain and Latin America who do not. Thank you.
But you have I triple E authorization 😀👍
Ha! There is no beating Fran’s rare collection, I’d be a fool to even try! 🤣✌️
All the younger folks are googling "How is Benny Hill"
Super cool!
I think you should bite the bullet and make clickbait like thumbnails and use the phrase rarest display in the title. Big red "Is this the only one? right on the thumbnail.
I would love to buy you a coffee when I come to PA.
Very cool
Wow, opened it up and then repaired it!
So cool.
good stuff
F R A N L A B
This terrible crisis in the world??? WHICH ONE??? THERE ARE TOO MANY!!!
That thing is way too interesting. This needs to spur some real creativity in people now.
Doogi(wavinging machine s...
I was like I already seen that before, make sense now 😅