These days, not only are oscilloscopes very common, but even a cheap instrument today would have been the envy of the world’s greatest labs not that long ago. But back in the day, the home experimenter basically had two choices: buy a surplus scope that a big company was getting rid of or build a Heathkit. [Radiotvphononut] bought an old Heathkit OL-1 scope at an estate sale and set about putting it back in service.
If you are used to a modern scope, you’ll be amazed at how simple a scope like this can be. A handful of tubes and a CRT is the bulk of it. Of course, the OL-1 is an analog scope with a 400 kHz bandwidth. It did, however, have two channels, which was a rarity at the time.
The OL-1 was sold for a few years up to 1956 and cost about $30 as a kit. There was a version with a larger screen (five whole inches) that cost an extra $40, so you can bet there were more OL-1s sold since $40 was a big ask in 1956. While they don’t seem like much today, you were probably the envy of the ham club in 1956 when you lugged this in for show and tell.
This is a long video, but it pays off at the end. Overall, this was a more capable scope than the $66 scope from 10 years earlier we looked at. Did you ever wonder how people visualized signals before the CRT? Funny, we did too.
Had one of those in the late 1970s as a youngun. Wrote HeathKit and they responded with partial documentation! The scope died in the early 80s, wish I had kept it instead of trashing it:(
I had one as my first scope when I was a teenager in the ’80s. I made the mistake of lending it to a “friend”, and never saw it again. Figures.
I don’t believe OL1 had two channels. Mine had Horizontal, Vertical, and Zaxis (Intensity) inputs if I remember correctly. There was an accessory box that would chop between two inputs and added an offset if you needed two vertical channels displayed at once.
My first scope was an RCA service master that looked a lot like this. Like a WO-91 maybe…
I’m not going to comment on the old Heathkit equipment that I have.
I don’t want the younger members thinking this is a forum only for old forces like me.
But, I could tell you about my arthritis!
B^)
Ha! I double checked and then auto-carrot still changed “fogies” to forces!
Bad! Bad spell checker!
No cookies for you!
FWIW I dont use it much unless I’m explaining to someone how a scope works but I have an old Heathkit OS-11 and loads of old Micronta stuff at a mere 37.
I thought my textronix 10mhz from the early 90s dated me
The OL-1 had one signal input and an external synch input. It did not have two channels.
https://www.w6ze.org/Heathkit/Heathkit_041_OL1.pdf
The schematic diagram for the OL-1 is in that PDF. There’s a single inpit channel and an external synch input.