AWA Communication Technologies Museum - 2022-07-30
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. Help keep communications history alive by becoming a member of the Antique Wireless Association at: https://antiquewireless.org/homepage/membership/ Subscribe to the Antique Wireless Museum channel and you'll receive news of our latest video uploads.
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...
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.
Love these films, what a wealth of info, I had no idea how oscillating crystals were made. Truly fascinating.
I love old documentaries. No BS, just explain.
Introduce, outline, explain, summate, conclude. It was wartime. ainobudygotimfodat
@@thomashughes_teh It's a shame that it took such violence to introduce us to clarity, but maybe there was no other way. Necessity is the mother of invention.
Me too.
@@DAClarkismit galvanized us and we need that now and just maybe there is a way to do it without a war.
They were meant to educate and yes I love them as well! None of them have anything close to "here's a critical concept you need to understand, please see some other video we did" like you get with most edutainment on YT these days
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.
@@nzoomed Modern manufacturers start with large factory grown crystals instead of the mined natural crystals. Slicing the crystals into thin wafers and grinding them flat is still done more or less manually, basically as shown here. But after that the process is much more automated. No manual fiddling with each crystal to etch it precisely to the right frequency.
@@cogoidyeah, that would be expected. The size of the modern ones is far smaller today, the 16mhz ones I use on my arduino are pretty tiny, seems to be a different form factor compared to the much taller ones I would install in my CB radio, but pcb footprints are identical
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.
I solved the energy "crisis" I developed a system that costs around 500$ and is perpetual Free electricity, please look up Wirtz Pump then apply this. I have figured out how to generate electricity using gravity, water and implementing a design called a Wirtz pump if you pump up to a second tank and then pipe it to fall driving the pump its perpetual now offset via chain drive the paddles above the water line and use buckets instead of paddles to mitigate loss if you incorporate rainfall into the top tank you can find nominal values that allow the system to run for the life of the material. you can have free electricity using an old washer motor and this system can be built to spec based on need for high flow heavy weight or simply to run a fridge and lights for 10 years with 500 dollars in materials. I love life
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!!!!!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤣🤣🤯🤣🤯🤣🤯🤣
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
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...
I worked in an USAF research group that grew synthetic quartz for space-based applications in the 80s and 90s. The RYHX hydrothermal growth process was scaled up and transferred to Motorola; subsequently, the RYHX quartz team received an Award from the Federal Laboratory Consortium for Technology Transfer.
This is peak YouTube. Thanks for sharing!
I'm pretty sure this wasn't produced for YouTube 🙄
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.
@@ciprianpopa1503 Quartz crystals are still used, but they only provide reference frequencies for electronic circuits to create multiples of. They don't use a different crystal for each radio frequency any more.
@@ciprianpopa1503 ill tell you the company i work for is using equipment old enough it could be in this video. Its largely the same process. Some things are nicer, like now we have a wire saw to cut the slices, but a few tears ago we had a saw just like this video. We do RF lapping using an old tube receiver.
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.
@@cogoid Imagine superatomic semiconductors.
I did this back in 1953, many of the workers had breathing and skin problems due to the residues of crystals and acids.
I'm sure. 🫂 ❤ Hope u r well. 😊
The fact that a plastic holder was used when immersing the crystals in the etching solution, highlights that "solution" is hydrofluoric acid, since many plastics are impervious to hydrofluoric acid which would eat away at most metals & glass. Even a little bit gets on you, and you're likely to have very negative effects down the road, if not within hours, because it soaks all the way to the bone. A tiny drop on one's skin, might not even be felt, which makes it even more dangerous, as every second it isn't wiped, washed, or rinsed off, means more penetrates into one's body.
The dangers of working with hydrofluoric acid were already well known by 1943, when this film was produced, so I wonder, if they left off their gloves or other personal protection just for the film's aesthetics? I saw a lot of the women workers in their Sunday best w/ fingers full of jewelry, ready to be caught in machinery, touch electrical contacts, or trap chemicals between their jewelry & their skin. Were some even told to doll themselves or their hands up just for the film, or was such blatant disregard for safety just another day on the job?
Chromic acid is no joke! Especially when used in open containers filled nearly to the brim and virtually no ppe
@@sparky6086idk man I can't imagine they would allow anyone near HF without protection even back then, a spill could literally kill someone with no hope of saving
@@sparky6086 its obvious its just for the video, dont u see women nowadays with their ratchet hands and it surely didnt start recently
Absolutely amazing! People have no idea how much work goes into what they take for granted.
This is fantastic stuff. These videos are of such high quality.
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
Wow
Its absolutely amazing to see such quality control and pride in your work. These were the times when America was at its greatest
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.
These ladies showed up to win a war with style on point.
Love it.
@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.
I think the local manicurist was very busy leading up to the filming.
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
They're impervious to x-rays, etchants and chromic salts too.
@@tsm688 was there a point there? Are you just being pedantic?
@@gianni_schicchi we never stopped using analog processes
@@BeamRider100Unlike poor Betty.
I absolutely appreciate these historic documentaries. straight simple and fancyless, information easy to understand.
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.
Wizard: Back in my day, we used magic lenses to tune magic power crystals to precise magic frequencies that let us hear thoughts from around the world.
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 !
This is such a cool video!
Excellent presentation! I am a WWII born person and can only study the difficulties of production that were in place and appreciate them. I became a career pilot and some of the very early radios had a "coffee grinder" device that required your tuning your receiving frequency and it became rather busy when on final! Thanks for sharing and the best of luck!
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 fun part is that the more information like this you absorb, the more smart and creative you get!
If it makes you feel any better, no one person invented this method by himself. but it is the result of many years and many more people to create. This could be said for many other things. Like microelectromechanical systems and microchip manufacturing.
That is a phenomenal process. The amount of research had to be staggering!
Your video made the whole process crystal clear. Thank you.
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.
I worked on an RAF site in the 1980's. There was a Cyrstal 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
In the early 80s surface mount xtal components from synthetic crystals grown in autoclaves started coming out of Japan.
What a marvelous (literally) video! What we owe to the scientists and technicians who developed and refined these processes is immeasurable (unlike the crystal frequencies...).
WOW - what an education. THANK YOU. - In my apprenticeship I had to save for my first crystal. Now I know why. - An AWA trainee from Ashfield 1970
I've been right past that factory, many years ago.
This gem is an awesome slice of history! The process is fascinating.
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.
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.
Surely they were very expensive given all the work that goes into this. Even today, high end computer chips, like high end video card GPUs are very expensive, as the clean rooms cost a fortune and then some. And there are many steps, though most or all are automated. Long story short, people are paying over $800 for a higher end computer video card.
I see you are in Europe, PAL.
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.
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😂
And that music🙈
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.
Japan did even more in the early 1980s.
Why?🤔
There are beautifully clear quartz crystals still being found today in Arkansas, for example.
I bet that it probably was just cheaper to import them from Brazil than mining them in the US.
@@Der_Kleine_Mann Quartz for making radio crystals needs to not just be visually good. They must be completely defect free at molecular level. They must be colourless, i.e., pure as well.
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.
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.
In the highest tech, most advanced labs, there will always be some such equipment.
The attention to detail your crews put in is second to none, truly awesome work.
The 1946 Quartz Crystal textbook ie Bible by a Raymond Heising says they made 10 million of type FT 241 type alone from the Fall of 1941 to end of 1944..
That text is 562 pages if you want the math and engineering of quartz crystals. Graphs crystal cuts.
Heising was a radio research engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories. That's were much if this started.
On page 494 it says they use 80 crystals per army tank and it was FM radios they used.
All those "making crystals" was done all over the Midwest often in dinky towns. Oklahoma Kentucky Indiana etc. Also war effort vacuum tube factories too. A old neighbor in Indiana worked at one.
I saw this film back in the late 1960s.
The Crystal textbook here was bought at the TRW swap meet in 1987. It has an embossed seal on some inside pages Simon-Ramo Library. Embossed like an engineer uses
In that era they use a physical crystal for each frequency ie channel just like a 50s thru mid 70s cb radio did. Ie before there was a way with digital electronics to use one crystal per radio. That is why they had to make so many different crystals.
I think the ww2 crystal cases are Bakelight
Thanks for the insight!
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.
so well said , many people depreciate the past efforts thta lead to our comfort.
The size of these Xtals are around the size of a complete modern radio, I remember using these way back in the day :)
This piques my interest in seeing modern production techniques for these crystals - seeing how they compare.
Came her to post same. Would be interesting to see how they're made today's tech. Prolly a boring 5 minute video tho. 😂 just a machine spraying micro-gold on man-made silicon atoms. Have u ever seen/heard how they're arranging single atoms of graphene? Crazy tech these days!
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
@stabilini - 2024-06-09
Watching a +75 years old documentary... internet is amazing.
@JongJande - 2024-06-11
Apparently this is what we are allowed to see ....
@davidg3944 - 2024-06-14
@@JongJande Open your eyes if you wish to see more.
@JongJande - 2024-06-17
@@davidg3944 Rest assured: I have my eyes wide open .... and since decades.
@sergiooliveira9726 - 2024-06-29
@@davidg3944 Good one!!
@togowack - 2024-06-30
Yes all of this inherited equipment and factories that very very old long before any cowboys showed up, and who knows when it was built and by who. War is a great way to sneak something into existence !