From Raw Crystal to Crystal Oscillator - Crystals go to War in 1943
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- Опубликовано: 29 июл 2022
- Electronics has always relied on critical materials that have been difficult to acquire. Today we think of the gold, cobalt, neodymium, terbium, or dysprosium that are required to make electric vehicles, but during World War II raw quartz crystals were required to manufacture the oscillators used in the radio transmitters that were critical to the war effort. This was before the technology to grow quartz crystals was perfected, and the best natural quartz was mined in Brazil.
This video shows in amazing detail every step in making a quartz crystal oscillator, from inspecting the incoming raw crystals to shipping the finished crystal in its holder. You'll be ready to set up your own quartz crystal factory after watching this film. Filmed at the Reeves Sound Laboratory, it shows the degree of labor intensive effort that was required to produce an accurate frequency reference, and highlights the contributions of women in wartime manufacturing.
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So much manual labor on something we now take for granted in modern electronics.
And the film itself. Every title and transition all done with manual tools.
@@8BitNaptime They probably have been making them by machine for many decades now.
Mostly replaced with silicon-based oscillators now, because they're much simpler to make, etc. Still useful technology without which we'd still be reading newspapers for news and studying in person
@@wolfy9005 But not as accurate, hence why crystal oscillators are still in use.
@@wolfy9005 There are MEMS oscillators, but they have had a bit of a scandal when iPhones died when exposed to helium.
It appears my PC motherboard still has crystal oscillators, with the very noticeable thin round can type (32768Hz tuning fork crystal) to keep time.
As A novice Amateur radio operator, I was only allowed to use a transmitter with a crystal to control the frequency, no variable frequency oscillator transmitter was permitted, which meant I had to spend my allowance on many crystals, for the three bands I was allowed to operate on.
As I learned over time, the crystal frequencies could be changed by disassembling the holder and using a pencil to make a dot on the center of the crystal, I could lower the frequency a small amount, or by grinding the crystal on an oilstone, I could raise the frequency in order to avoid the many foreign broadcast stations operating in the novice ham bands.
But the best crystal hack was to add a screw to the metal cover of the crystal holder, and adjust the pressure on the mounting plate to change the frequency without having to open the holder each time to change the frequency.
All that changed after the first year as a novice, when there was a rule change, allowing VFO, variable frequency oscillator transmission, and my money was spent on a VFO for my transmitter! And what a change! Being able to tune up and down the bands opened up my tiny novice bands, and I was able to communicate with other hams around the world much easier than ever!
But the best type of frequency control is the 'synthesized' oscillator, and it still uses a quartz crystal to stabilize and control the oscillator, and allows for channelized switch controlled frequency selection.
Technology has advanced, but crystals will still be used in electronic equipment in order to keep the required source of oscillations needed at the right frequency, and as stable as possible. And even if the crystals are no longer made from natural quartz crystals, but are grown in a lab, the history of their benefits to communication and other electronics, including the health industry, will continue to grow!
we use crystals more than ever. their uses in computing have exploded, there's probably 1 to 3 in the pocket of the average north american at all times, and who knows how many in their home.
@@tsm688 The use of crystals has exploded, as they can also be used as filters as well as in oscillators!
@@tsm688 certainly more than 3, any modern mobile phones has 5 to 7 when counting SAW filters. But modern crystals are all synthetic and the production process is fully automated, nothing to do with this film.
I thought most were already grown in labs because you can control the environment, I've seen this one crystal that was in the shape of a huge cylinder, perfect looking mo inclusions, same with a thick square one, they were grown for NASA or something but they didn't pass the requirements, so they get sold off. My understanding is most electronic crystals were synthetic nowadays.
@@shable1436 they are. you don't have to mess around with finding the right angle because it's the angle you grew it at.
1958 I was an apprentice at DECCA Navigator. Another apprentice an I were given a job of building Xtal Oscillator assemblies for the DECCA Mk 5 marine navigation system. We measured the resonance and output voltage of each plate before assembling into the module. The clear used was called Araldite, the British version of Eastman 400 glue. We then tested the modules in an Oscillator jig. We delivered each batch to the production Foreman. Later I was a Priduction Inspector. I finished my Apprenticeship as a Prototype Technician to an Engineer. The Engineer was Ken Mantovani, son of Maestro Mantovani, of the Mantovani Orchestra fame.
What do you work for now ?
@@jacobmoonlight5793 That man must be in his 80s at this stage, so hopefully he's retired.
@@nodnodwinkwinkV nah he's probably still working 3 jobs...
@@quoudtenlike many pensionados they are busier than before retirement......😂
@@Baard2000 ha ha well i was commenting on the "new American dream" but yours works too...
How did YT know I'd be incredibly interested in this topic? Nothing in my viewing history would suggest it. I'm convinced YT is reading my subconscious mind. Somehow.
YT is tuned into your frequency. With a quartz rock crystal. It's trying to communicate to you. To warn you about IMPENDING DOOM. AGI IS HERE. ITS PLANNING DEMISE. EPA.....EPA...
It just throws a variety of content at you, hopeing you click on something.
@lilPOPjim *hoping. 👍
Ah that would be one of our skynet matrix overlords disguising itself as a google algorithm
@@Nanocology its a crystal in the holy algorithm computer of YT receiving the ossilations from your brain what it really needs. Its the only part of the YT holy algorithm computer what really does something good. The rest 0f the 99.9999999% of the computers capacity is used for CENSORSHIP!!!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤣🤣🤯🤣🤯🤣🤯🤣
The fact that someone actually figured this out just amazes me and reminds me how stupid and uncreative I am
I'm in awe of everything I see these days. Living in the future has a way of making us feel stupid. But remember all the stuff demonstrated in this film was the product of hundreds of people failing thousands of times. Then eventually they get it figured out. Your not stupid or uncreative. You just aren't able to recognize all the amazing things you do.
Thank God for white people
@@Xsiondu Yes. The internet has moved our penis-envy from the neighborhood, to worldwide. It is important to remind ourselves it's okay to just be the village idiot, as being world idiot is impossible to achieve.
the other guy who commented ~3mo ago is probably wrong, but yeah like many, many other people will probably also say just try and fail faster. you'll never achieve anything special or reach your dreams just sitting around and thinking or becoming a corporate slave. do something, if it fails it fails. you can deal with the aftermath, well, after. that isn't to say you shouldn't be cautious or ignore the option of doing your due diligence. if you don't know what h2s is you should just google "h2s msds filetype:pdf" before handling or even obtaining it. that being said it is actually something hard to start on, but once you get in the groove you'll get going good. having a jolly time just messing around in a workshop is how new stuff is discovered. though its harder to find something ACTUALLY new here in 2024, it isn't impossible. honestly the way these crystal's properties were first discovered is probably just some dude electrocuting rocks to see what would happen or just hitting them and noticing they make electric arcs.
The fun part is that the more information like this you absorb, the more smart and creative you get!
Back when making electronic components was a real hand-made chore. Now we press a button and stamp out 50 billion of the item we need. Someday we will need to remember how things were made.
An SC-cut 5th overtone crystal maintained at 90 deg C drives a diy clock I made 10 years ago. In that time it has gained nearly two seconds. That's one part in 158 billion. Quartz is amazing!
Not an expert but at that rate, couldn’t the deviation be explained by gravity differential?
158 million, not billion
That is why we must use a secondary correction in order to keep super accurate time. I spent 30 years in the quartz industry working on low noise, high long term accuracy time bases. To this day, even though retired years ago, I still maintain a respectable lab for fiddling around with time bases.
@@professorx4047 You're right.
Cesium atoms and quartz oscillator are called atomic clocks, and the most accurate man has discovered
So interesting, It's amazing the things that were done with analog processes. It also shows that to be victorious in war your women need fine haircuts, nice outfits, and above all GREAT nails.
Also interesting and telling about just how much industrial capacity the US had, this film is in color. It is amazing how many of these type films were done in color which was fairly expensive at the time and something only a truly great power fitting on all cylinders could afford. My God what we have lost.
you realize that all digital processes are founded on analog processes right? digital is nothing but a number, the step to go from that number to an actual results is analog.
Crystals are still made more than ever too
Looking back on what seems so simple but laborious, it astounds me that we can figure out a way to take a natural crystal, distill it down so we can pluck a frequency out of the ether, and be able to connect with others around the world. Amazing creatures these human beings!
Love the old machinery!
we still use quartz more than ever. just synthetic quartz now
These ladies showed up to win a war with style on point.
Love it.
The lady operating the X-ray machine without any shielding/protection probably stopped showing up after a couple of years...
@OreoBambino let's hope she did not work while pregnant.
This was almost around the time the cumulative effects of radiation were being understood. I hope they were rotated before it was too late (they probably weren't because nuclear research was hush-hush-tight-lips).
@@OreoBambino Looks like the x-ray machine had a lead enclosure, she was probably fine
@@OreoBambino By those times they knew a lot. Go figure that she was tracking the diffraction position maxima of those crystals, if you know what that is, and you bragg about the machine not being shielded.
Watching a +75 years old documentary... internet is amazing.
Apparently this is what we are allowed to see ....
Those process opened the doors to microélectronics chips manufacturing process.
No. Lapidary processes did.
@@MrShobar well thats just a part of the process of making silica wavers, as seen in the video
@@schnaps1790 There is no such a thing as silica wavers.
@@ciprianpopa1503 you just watched a video about them, a wafer is just a thin slice of something and quarz is just silica (SiO²)
@@schnaps1790 Sure, but you were supposed to refer to silicon wafer, which is synthetically grown silicon, just cut perpendicular to the growth axis. These are natural quartz crystals.
The crystallographer and chemist from Poland - Jan Czochralski found the way to create mono-crystals setting a cornerstone for today semiconductors development.
This is super-important for silicon crystals used in making chips and transistors. Synthetic quartz crystals however are grown by a very different method.
Who was the intended audience for this film? The first two minutes are so general that it initially appears to be made for the general public. However, the beginning is followed by 40 minutes with so much detail that I would not be surprised if some of the information was classifed in 1943 when this was made. It is great for historical electronics, though.
Being in a signal unit in the late 80's I would guess signal officer training. Some of this information was still pertinent for older equipment, though that stuff was being phased out.
few things to note:
1. US used to have the best manufacturing of the world
2. this presentation is so clear and to the point, 0 hype, all facts, stated in plain down-to-earth american english
3. 6:03 they make a note to show a black guy working, and plenty women. in war, everyone is mobilizedll
4. the production is a mix of high-end machines, and low-end scrappy rigs, manual works, and a healthy dose of human mark-ups and annotations. it has 0 fluff and 100% practicality
5. 21:51 note the handle on the rig, it's literally a cabinet handle, again, more scrappiness
6. you could tell the general quality and speed of workers go up in the production chain, as the items being handled become more valuable
7. everyone was so determined in their work, as their product is a matter of life and death
100% , another thing to take into consideration, a film about a very obscure process was made in color, color film and processing was much more expensive than b6w. Many of these educational films were in color. It shows just how vast US resources were at the time.
Survival of a “tribe” can be very productive apparently …
also keep in mind this was a propaganda film. everyone knew they were being filmed and to look their best
Amazing checking for every parameter. Today, 6 people in an automated factory would manufacture hundreds of times more crystals each day.
and they are not be exposed to strong Acid, its fumes, inhaling crystal dust, Radiation, and the possibility of Grinding /sawing ones fingers off, if they had a lil Oopsie!
well it help we use cultured quarts instead of natural, it takes 90% of all this process away by having pure oriented crystals
Try 10k a hour…..
@@markcondrey2297 And the piece of crystal is very small compared to those huge wafers.. I believe they are grown in rods as small as fiber optic cable and instead of plates a fine gold wire is wrapped around them.. Most modern radios use phased locked loop digital pulses to generate the frequency and crystals are only used as part of a filter system in higher end radios or as reference oscillators for the PLL..
You're missing the point, this film was showcasing what technology was available and used at this time. No respect for the hard work of our forefathers.....
Wow, old technology with respect to frequency determination, but darn impressive, plus a lot of work to manufacture.
The same technology is used today. Maybe the machines are a bit more beautiful.
@@ciprianpopa1503 In chip wafers?
@@emilkarpo Many devices still use quartz crystals for clock signal generation, including computers, cell phones and many other devices that have processors. There are also ceramic resonators now, so some devices use those instead. But the crystals are cut in tiny sizes now and put in small metal cases.
This is peak RUclips. Thanks for sharing!
Although I was a professional RF Engineer, for very many years, I had never seen this documentary film before. I have designed and used crystal oscillator circuits many times in my life but I had no idea just how many production stages and tests were originally involved in mounting and manufacturing the quartz slices. A great film detailing a piece of technology history.
I wonder how they are made today? There is a company called Rakon that makes them here in new zealand and its all done in a clean room environment, their crystals end up in satellites and all sorts of spacecraft.
@@nzoomed Good question.- the number of manufacturers seems to have decreased over the years and I understand that gold plating the contacts has become almost universal. Modern developments in frequency synthesis and phase lock circuits means there is less demand for discrete frequency crystals, but more demand for the "digital friendly" frequencies that lend themselves to these synthesis schemes. It would be very interesting to see how a modern company makes them.
@@hectorpascalmodern ones are also much smaller.
Those ones that go inside digital watches are pretty tiny.
This is fantastic stuff. These videos are of such high quality.
When I was a young engineer in the mid 80's. I developed an TCXO in Thickfilm technology. Afterwards I developed a crystal plating machine.
It’s sad that almost all of the custom frequency US crystal manufacturers are now gone.
Fascinating. If only I could sit and listen to you speak about it.
The size of these Xtals are around the size of a complete modern radio, I remember using these way back in the day :)
Between the Chemicals, X-ray exposure, unguarded saws, etc. Not a scene in this movie could be duplicated today! OSHA would shit a brick!
Don't forget the all white male work force that would turn heads in Human resources.
Wooooww safety standards were different 80 years agoo, reaallyy????
@@BeesKneesBenjaminyo mama
no gloves, nothing😂
Back then if you said OSHA, they would think you were from New Jersey and saying "oh, sure" as an affirmation.
There was a group of criminals that decided to change the crystals on their radios to be able to communicate without being intercepted. They left their radios behind at the scene of the crime. The authorities found the radios and noticed the crystals were custom-made. At the time, there were only a handful of people who made these crystals, and they found a receipt with a name and address.
That requires some kind of facility..
@@sclogse1 hence that receipt
can you link to a source for this story? It sounds really interesting. Or you just made it up.
did you just made id up>?
Very cool
One of my customers bought the outdated US national reserve of natural quartz crystals for a song. Made them into gemstones.
The father of a friend of mine did the same with broken or flawed YAG laser crystals -bought a huge haul of them for a song.
And in doing so, he became a saboteur. 🤣😂
Which song or was it an original tune?
And that’s why ICM went out of business? They could not get the raw materials? Is it Bowmar crystals who bought the supply out?
@@DanSpotYT It's a figure of speech.
X-ray crystallography, I had know idea.....cheers.
Don't know how this got onto my algorithm along with a handful of others, but I ended up actually watching this
And you have to admit along with a fascinating process the women had great outfits, nice hairdos, and above all great nails.
Perfect nails for manual work. Yep!
They must have gotten all spruced up because they knew the filming day was on that day.
Yeah and I shared it, because it's really interesting.
Love these films, what a wealth of info, I had no idea how oscillating crystals were made. Truly fascinating.
The military also got some very fine quartz crystals from Arkansas. The geology in the Ouachita Mountains in the Hot Springs area has a lot of quartz crystal formations. A lot of crystals were mined for the war effort.
Today, there are lots of places where you pay a small fee and can go dig for quartz crystals and keep any that you find. And if you know where to go, you can find real nice crystals for free.
We used to back in the day pull the crystal chips in our radios and switch them giving us a unique channel. This works if it the same in sender and receiver.
Please say more about switching
You can do it with CB radios too... "private" channels. Well, at least private to other CBers.
Our switch the tx and rx around and moves the the frequency up 455khz
So say you were on ch 22 which is 27.225 the you would end on 27.680 if the radio has high side injection.
I worked on an RAF site in the 1980's. There was a Cyrystal factory still making Crystals pretty much like this video. I think you could order a crystal of a specific frequency. I am not sure how much longer the facility operated it must have been close to end of life even then.
Ah! Was thinking of that place as I watched. Good old REU 132 shed, 1968-69.
It was salford electrical instruments in heywood, we grew and manufactured oscillators just like the video
Absolutely amazing! People have no idea how much work goes into what they take for granted.
I love Xtal's, I even got 'hands on' grinding one with toothpaste for a Gonset 2M rig I was listening to in Jr. High in the mid 70s! Amazing how much work went into making them, and at the time I was getting mine from a cardboard surplus barrel at 'All Electronics' on Vermont in Old Los Angeles in FT-243 (I think they are called) holders for 50 cents or so...
Truly fascinating. Unbelievable how much labor was applied.
Some of the best examples of what wasn't used are to be found in the Earth Man and Science Museum in Sofia Bulgaria and specimens from the same collection are also to be found in the Paris Geology museum.
The US had a lot of trouble getting sufficient quartz of good enough quality to meet war needs. So Bell Labs devised a process for making synthetic quartz, making most of the work shown in this film obsolete.
The film shows them using the old fashioned pre-war FT holders. Several manufacturers came up with gold plating the contacts on to the plate and encapsulating in glass - thus very much improving performance and making the rest of the work shown in this film obsolete.
Neato, thnx for the extra infos 🙂
HC6U and HC18U spring to mind.
This was so helpful to watch. Oscillators!
And this was just one tiny aspect of the war effort. 🤯
I am flabbergasted at the amount of work that went into the manufacturing of crystals !
Staggering !
And to be sawed to a 1/16 of an inch !
Just amazing !
But to think those Brothers stumbled upon the Piezoelectric effect of crystals, too is amazing !
And to know how many times this was used, is mind blowing !
If you simply throw any white Quartz rock against another one in the dark, you will get a brilliant display of the electric potential in the rocks.
@@kevinsellsit5584
That too, is interesting !
I wonder if you had a Radio receiver close by, if you could hear the spark from the collision ?
I'm guessing not unlike lightning, it is sending out energy on multiple Frequencies simultaneously ?
If you know Morse Code, and could hold the stones, one in each hand, you might be able to communicate with someone in close proximity ?
I wonder just how far those sparks could be heard ?
Wonder if this is how German physicist Heinrich Hertz got started ? ⚡🤔
Lol...!
@@sleeve8651 The discharges will be really inconsistent but they will send a wide range of a random spectrum, just like static or a lightning or a bad brush in a motor. I remember I figured out you had to cap coax splitters by noticing the tv went fuzzy when I used a cordless drill right under it and only there
@@sleeve8651 It would work for morse code within visual range (wear your safety glasses). You get brilliant sparks every time. I would assume any radio transmission would be chaos.
Nice corn bread
It’s amazing what was accomplished with equipment that looks like it was cobbled together from a trip to the hardware and cooking supply store! Different times.
I used to know an old gentleman named Harry Boneham who had worked at ERA (English Racing Engines). He had a lathe from the 1800’s in his basement that ran off an overhead shaft. He did world class machining in that basement.
Well..there was a war on. Make do and mend.
There's something appealing about tools you can look at and understand.
Did you know that 4 quartz makes a gallon and ten gallon makes a hat.
A pint of clear water weighs a Pound and a Quarter. ..Imperial
Like collecting ivory in Alabama. Becasuse the Tusk'a'loosa
Badum tish!
Philips worked with NRL in D.C.developing Xray diffraction, Philips pioneered the science, now used in all industry, and products testing, manufacturing, schools, Pharma, steel, everything. Philips bailed on Analytical Xray several years ago,
Marcel VOGEL pioneered the quartz Crystal chips for IBM (had 32 patents we know of)
At Vogel's February 14, 1991 funeral, IBM researcher and Sacramento, California physician Bernard McGinity, M.D. said of him, "He made his mark because of the brilliance of his mind, his prolific ideas, and his seemingly limitless creativity."[3]
Thanks for the citation
It`s interesting - how much was a quartz crystal resonator in 1943? I think - tens of dollars because there was loads of hand work . Nowadays they are quite cheap - for example 0.2$ per resonator on 4.43 MHz.
That is a phenomenal process. The amount of research had to be staggering!
Narrator turning the pages on his sheet is hilarious
Some day our ancestors will be telling stories of us in their caves. How we could fly like birds and make rocks talk to each other.
Descendants, not ancestors; but, yeah. And many of our contemporaries are nearly there already, save that they have cellular/smart phones to (inadequately) express their amazement.
@@herbertbates4655 sorry 😂
We don't fly like birds though... We fly with noisy inefficient propellers in stupid metal planes that crumple into a heap and catch on fire every time they stall. We used to at least coast around on the trade winds in airships until the oil tycoons blew up the Hindenburg. But I think birds would be offended if they heard you say that.
How we made torches wich looked like lava and slept in beds of water. How we wore shoes made from the bellies of the beasts of the swamp and walking canes out of the tusks from the beasts of the savannah. Our garbs were white as snow and we rolled on wagons that could jump.
At the rate we're going, that's lamentably ineed very likely.
Thank you, this was a great watch!
It would be interesting to see a video of the present day manufacturing technique
Amazing the "millionth of an inch girls" are testing frequency and etching with acid while very nicely dressed and painted nails. Nothing wrong with that at all, I just think it's amazing.
They're also likely dressed up more than usual for the cameras
And that etching solution is probably hydrofluoric acid. They're being pretty carefree around a compound that can melt your bones.
@@Superkuh2 Hydroflouric acid is also used by dentists. Crazy.
@@SwapPartLLC What's a dentist?
@@sclogse1 Tooth doctor.
Woah X-ray operator was standing next to next to X-ray machine while it was taking X-rays!🤯 well at least she was wearing a lead vest for some protection 🤷🏻♂️
Better than being one of the Radium Girls at least, I hope.
Yep! I noticed that at several points! It's scary knowing what we know today. They almost certainly got cancer later on. The chromic acid cleaning solution is incredibly carcinogenic, too. And the etchant solutions damage bones and muscles invisibly.
And ppl don't think quartz has magical properties, this proves there's definitely things we have discovered that seem so far out there, that they appear magical. From oscillators to frequency bands, to generating and electrical charge to start lighters.
We truly do stand on the backs of giants 😮
My Father, the town's TV repair man, gave me a Radio Shack P-Box crystal radio kit, in 1967..for my 4th Grade entry in the school Science Fair. (I did a prism for 2nd Grade.)..it worked like a charm.
that is an entirely different form of crystal! :)
I used to work for a company that was a DOD contractor. When we had to ship stuff, we would seal the boxes exactly as shown at the end of the video. We used a tape machine to moisten adhesive on paper tape, which was placed over every seam of the box. We did not have to stamp the tape seams, though, as the adhesive was strong enough to damage the box surface when removed.
Awesome to see this first or whatever hand. Thank you so much for posting.
Awesome mini doc mate. I was captivated the entire time. I just love this stuff. Can’t get enough learning.😊 Thank you for sharing.😊 10 out of 10 from me.😊
I actually did this on strontium titanate crystals for a summer job back in the 90's for superconductor crystal research... We didn't have the oil tank and polarizer, we looked for marks on the crystal which gave away the orientation to a degree. Then we'd mount it to a block and hit it with an X-ray source and then onto some polaroid film, and leave the room. Shoot it for a few minutes, tehn come back back and pop the film out and see the orientation. From there you'd know where to adjust it and grind a flat on it, reshoot it to see if you're still accurate, then send it off to the wire saws to be turned into disks.
It was an interesting job.
This is such a cool video!
Whoever figured this out is not only a Genius but in a way very lucky!
I have always had all sorts of ideas how crystals were made, based on old Ham's stories, etc. But this movie finally made it all CRYSTAL clear for me.
Ha Ha
Absolutely fantastic, the crystal sorting process is absolutely beautiful, something about the lighting in the initial sorting segments being much darker than professional photography really puts into perspective just how lovely quartz looks, I'd pay to sort through so many large crystals
In my early ham years, I was a frequent customer for ICM. And when I went to work for the GOVT, and when I was in charge of various radio systems, once again I gave ICM tons of GOVT business. Wonderful days!
My dad was a ham and built all his own gear, I remember him wet sanding a crystal to get it to the frequency he wanted.
Gotta love that these people are lowering crystals into highly corrosive etchants, without gloves... yeek.
In my schools electronics lab we wouldn't use gloves when etching PCB's, never thought about it at the time, it prob wasn't nasty enough that you couldn't just wash it off in the sink if you ever did get it on you, we didnt and i haven't ever heard of stories of chemical burns from doing that in my school, tho i did have a mate gas himself after mixing cleaning chemicals when mopping up at his work
I can't believe they are scrubbing, washing, lapping, etching, tuning and repeating this process with every handmade crystal !
Absolutely incredible assembly process shown, so much effort went into the entire process ^^ that was only 1 lady !
Now I want to see how modern Oscillators are made.
A very interesting video showing the whole process for the manufacture of quartz crystal resonators. The narrator mentions paraffin is used for fixing the quartz wafers to the production jigs. This is actually paraffin wax. Wax is an ideal adhesive for this application because it absorbs any acoustic energy generated by the cutting process that may cause cracking of the crystal wafers. It is also interesting to note that the girls are very well dressed and are wearing nice jewellery indicating that they were well paid for their highly skilled work.
Or their husbands were.
@@verdatum Guess where their husbands were then. Not very well paid. I highly suggest reading James Jones Whistle. That is, after reading his The Thin Red Line and From Here to Eternity. Incredible books.
@@verdatumtheir husbands were getting shot at by well trained German and Japanese soldiers
@@sclogse1 I read From Here to Eternity. FWIW, My grandfather worked as a medical assistant on a hospital ship in the Pacific theatre. I read all of his letters home.
I guess the point I was trying to make is that going by things like a woman's state of dress, grooming, jewelry, etc. is not a good measurement of wages. Those things were expected of women in public. The mindset of the time was: If it was needed for women to work to support the war effort, then they absolutely must look their best when they do it.
also indicates they had warning they were being filmed. It was a big deal in those days, you didn't just show up with a camcorder, you showed up with a bigass camera and bigass lights and every step staged for it.
great documentary. Such a huge number of people involved! I hope that all these "acid etching baths" are not made with fluorhydric acid given the bare hands of the ladies...
Of course it is and you gotta love the chromium bath also
Amazing! I have a few of these crystals, but I never knew that it was that complicated to make them.
It’s amazing how dumb we’ve gotten.
Now that's funny!
Keep in mind some of us still learn all these things and much much more. We're just not the sort of Jane or Tom you see on social media or in every day life. In the sea of information which we all swim in today many would drown if information requirements weren't as specialized as they have become, that's why many seem so ignorant and few seem so educated. Deeper waters means more stratification of swimmers. Those of us who need to plumb the depths rarely swim along the surface. Nothing has been lost, there's actually more now than ever, it's all just been reallocated.
Thanks to all the beautiful Ladies in these times for helping our airmen in a time of war
Which are died soon later to cancer because of exposing for radiation from RTG during this work.
@@karolwojtyla3047 The silica dust won't be helping either.
Hard to imagine how much time, energy and understanding had to go into the production of these... and that was back in the 40's. As much as we know now, it's still insane to look back and see how brilliant people had to be back then for us to be where we are now. They oftentimes had many hurdles to jump, but they always found new ways to do things, even if they weren't the best... they worked.
We would open an FT-243 and rub pencil lead on one side of the quartz to shift the frequency slightly. Sometimes we lapped them. Honestly didn't realize so much hand work involved in making them back then.
What a great video, no wonder crystals used to be expensive.
The final steps are so tedious it's almost painful to watch. Nowadays an HC-49 crystal is 10 cents. Used with a PLL, virtually any frequency can be synthesized.
@@d.jensen5153 The highest performance crystals are still expensive today. A simple 10 MHz oscillator from Wenzel costs a few hundred dollars.
Each certified crystal 🔮 must have cost as much as a West Australian Pink Diamond to produce. What an incredible record of a tiny aspect of the Military/Industrial Complex that helped win World War Two.
Now such crystals are "grown" in the laboratory and contain thousands of transistors on a piece the same size. Amazing advances took place during the Space Race and Cold War. Be interesting to see how it all develops now during the Putin War.
I work somewhere and we have lab grown crystals that are cut then gold is added etc, it’s used for pacemakers and aerospace and military, can’t say too much but all I can say is some of our crystal oscillators go into javelins
Cost is about $300-$400 a block of crystal about 12-13 inches long
@@papilevi1108 gold added to Crystal's? How ?
@@marffsou8479 haven’t learned the process but they mix the gold with chemicals and keep it in a room that’s all yellow and it has to stay there for a while
@@marffsou8479lot of ways to attach gold to a substrate,
fire a gold powder and binder paste onto height temp substrate.
glue thin sheets of gold leaf (guilding)
electroplate it like chrome.
sputter or vapor deposition in a vacuum chamber. Don't know what's cheapest and effective for generic quartz oscillators.
An amazing historical reference. It's clear (pun unintended) why we say this was The Greatest Generation. If work like this was required or the same sacrifices asked of the current generation there is no doubt we would lose any competition.
One must mention Anton J. Chmela when speaking of tuned crystal oscillators. As he pioneered there use back in the day. "Anton J. Chmela, the founder of General Quartz Laboratories, a manufacturer of quartz crystal oscillators for communications use during World War II".
Born 1904 in Austria-Hungary and died 2004 in Hendersonville, North Carolina.
He lived to be 100 years old and outlived three wives. He claimed that his knowledge of crystals gave him his youthful vigor, as he always carried specially cut and tuned crystals in him pockets at all times.
My heart and gratitude go to the many hard working and diligent women employed in these production operations; most were routinely exposed to poorly shielded x-rays, carcinogenic hexavalent chromium, volatile fluorine based etchants, and aromatic solvents we now know to be intensely carcinogenic. Their efforts cost them dearly down the road in the form of cancers and internal organ diseases, but without them the war would not have been a success. War is hell, and everyone suffers from it, but few know to acknowledge these noble women for their sacrifices. With a heavy heart and a tearful smile I thank these great women ancestors of mine for their service and their sacrifice.
But they looked great doing it, dressed up, hair doos, long painted nails, flowers in hair, and corsets. Obviously they knew filming was going to happen that day
@@shable1436 yep they absolutely were told and encouraged to wear their sunday best. it was a wartime propaganda film and to be seen as anything less than perfect would have brought great shame to the company and by extension their nation. I think a few operations even may have been told to not wear PPE (gloves, face shields) that would have obscured their glamorous features, too, considering the few shots of men usually have the men wearing PPE for less involved operations.
This is beautiful
We lost one of the best crystal manufactures a few years back. ICM ceased production more than likely due to a lack of demand from the communications industry. There might be a single company left in the states that will only manufacture the crystals but they do not provide the services of recrystaling of what are known as "channel elements" and doing temperature compensations for the crystals used in these elements. If anyone has a supplier in the EU please let us know.
I believe Bomar Crystal has distributors in the EU, if not you can contact them directly and they're very friendly folks.
Way back in 1970, a communications site I was at, used a frequency standard where the crystal temperature was kept stable by using an oven and Naphthalene. The oven was operated around the melting point of the Naphthalene, keeping the temperature stable. Then rubidium came along...
The good old times when you could operate a X-ray machine without form of shielding/protection...
i was wondering if that container and the little door that she closed were made of lead thick enough to protect the people in the room. . . . . Glad that wasn't my mom!
Easy early xp mining quartz. 😸
Insane how they figured all this out. it truely blows my mind how they came up with this.
Altogether excellent
Great Video
Blessings From Aberystwyth , Wales
I've done a few crystal oscillator sets in my career. Maybe once the type in the video. I repaired CB radios and scanners that had 3-12 channels that required separate xtals for each channel in the 1960s and 1970s. The CB radios need a pair, one for transmit, the other for the receive section. My company, Radio Shack, who sold these radios started making xtals for these sets as well as their own brand of wire and cable here in the US. However, the QC in that xtal Lab was not up to speed as some of the xtals dropped lower in frequency outside of the band tolerance over time. As if the equipment was bought and the experience needed to produce these xtals was lacking. The lab manager kept denying these claims and the store managers got the xtals from another source before the PLL units were sold with all of the frequencies, bells and whistles you want to monitor.
I love this. I have a rather extensive collection of crystal oscillators from this era. They are still stable. Thank you for the upload.
My Japanese radio has 3-4 different crystals in sealed little boxes. The front has a slot that accepts them on a larger box that goes in the slot.
Can't be more technical, it's the only one I've seen from overseas and it's all screwed shut and half covered in brass contact blades.
A friend of mine has known personally the brasilian Professor who gave is own collection of quartz christals to conclude RADAR development at end WW2. The rocks were immediately tranfered by air via South America, America, Canada and then England.
wow. What a tedious and time consuming process it was for those crystals back then. I wonder how many of the women working with the steps involving oil and/or chemical would have painted nails as could be seen in this documentary. It was surprising to learn that the frequency of a crystal could be lowered by exposure to X rays. I would have liked to know more about the tolerances for those crystals and by how many hertz they had to be adjusted near the final stages of production.
this was absolutely scripted, getting a film camera anywhere was a big deal in the day.
crazy how they figured all this shit out..
I did this back in 1953, many of the workers had breathing and skin problems due to the residues of crystals and acids.
Thanks so much for this. Utterly fascinating and educational. I really love "how it works" type video.
You always gotta gently warm thing up before mounting .
Awesome work and processes here.
These are such a pain to make in satisfactory, glad someone figured out a good way to automate them 👍
So the professionals were using Celsius 80 years ago already and the US public still hasn't caught on...
😄
Yup! Just about covers it!
Professional professionals usè Kelvin!😮😅😊
Give it a rest bro, I'm in PHX AZ and it's 109F right now, 43c just doesn't have the same impact. Metric is every bit as arbitrary as Imperial. You probably think kickball (Soccer) is better than SEC Football.
Got news for ya, Celsius has been used for many decades in the scientific communities, even the metric system of measurement.
Couldn't imagine training todays machine operators to do these things...
And while dressed in close to Sunday best, manicured and painted nails as well. Very classy crystal etching process they had going on there.
You mean button pushing monkeys? I'm sure the process has been far more automated now. And with lab grown crystals that require far less work.
Incredible. Thanks bunches for this informative video.