Old measuring and testing equipment for communications engineering
The Institute of Electrical and Optical Communications Engineering is one of the oldest institutes of electrical engineering in Stuttgart. In the winter semester of 1937/38, the institute still appeared in the course catalog as the "Collection for Electrical Communications Engineering". Research focused on the theoretical description and practical development of devices for telecommunications technology - but research was also carried out in the fields of electroacoustics and the physiology of hearing and vision. In the 1960s, topics such as semiconductor memory, fast pulse technology, digital signal processing and - as early as the beginning of the 1970s - optical communications technology were added with a view to the new developments in communications technology at the time. Over the decades, an extensive range of measuring and testing equipment for communications technology was developed. This included measuring transmitters and receivers for radio signals, pulse generators and high-quality oscilloscopes that were as powerful as the state of the art at the time. The devices themselves were never regarded as part of a collection. They were items of everyday use that soon became obsolete due to the ever-increasing pace of technical progress and were replaced by new ones. The old devices were taken out of service and mostly scrapped. Nevertheless, a few pieces survived both the turmoil of war and the institute's move to the Campus Vaihngen and are now stored in the cellar at Pfaffenwaldring 47. They enable an exciting journey through time, in which the miniaturization during the transition from tube to transistor technology, for example, can be traced directly. And the oldest devices are fascinating just to look at because of the aesthetics of their display scales and their high-quality transport boxes.
Contact:
Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Vogel
Institute of Electrical and Optical Communications
