Requesting Diodes Through The Mail

My friend Bob recently tweeted this photo of a letter he wrote back in his salad days, ordering a few diodes from Poly-Paks in Massachusetts.

Of course, today, a diode is just a click away!


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3 Comments

  1. Back in the day, I ordered some industrial condensers from “Electronic Section, Unit 16”, and I received some crazy beads in an envelope. Even though they did disintegrate, they held a charge of 30,000 volts before doing so!

    I guess the economy became too bad for them, because I haven’t had any updated catalogs. I guess printing on metal pages was too fancy.

  2. I ordered parts from Poly-Paks. Of course back then the parts were not too expensive and shipping by parcel post was inexpensive (un-adjusted dollars). Of course I remember when there was no UPS and no ZIP code. I made my own PCB’s with copperclad and fingernail polish resist.

  3. Dangit Mike, you beat me to it.

    I was about to recount how two weeks later, they got a bunch of electronics parts they hadn’t ordered, and an instruction sheet on how to build something called an “Interociter.”

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