Telequipment S31 oscilloscope.

[Geordie McBoyne]

This oscilloscope has been in my possession for more than fifty years. The instrument was my first oscilloscope and was in regular use right up to the late seventies. By then it had been replaced by more sophisticated oscilloscopes.
Going back to the old days of TV servicing many workshops didn't possess an oscilloscope, goodness knows how they were ever able to fix anything.
It's still usuable but it still has bad triggering although it was a lot better then than it is now.
The first waveform was taken from the collector of one of the frame output transistors in the Marconi 2000 series CTV. The other is the internal calibration signal, 1 volt P - P.  Rise times are not good because it is simply a chopped sine wave.

Geordie McBoyne.

[Refugee]

That brings back the memories to when all we could afford was a single beam scope.
Mine was a Russian C15.

[ppppenguin]

The days when any scope at all would have been luxury for a hobbyist and expensive for a TV workshop. A Tektronix 500 series would have been strictly in dreamland.

[Nick]

I built a Heathkit IO-18U as my first scope in about 1970. Cannot for the life of me remember what became of it...

A Tektronix 500 series would have been a dream only. Never owned a Telequipment scope...

[Murphyv310]

Nice to see a good bright trace after no doubt many years of unuse.
Indeed many small outlets and service depts never had a scope.
My first employer British Relay in 1970 had four scopes to cover 12 bench engineers and five apprentices.

[ppppenguin]

I suppose the time scopes became essential in the domestic service trade was when colour TV arrived. Aligning and fautlfinding a decoder without a scope isn't possible. Not if you're doing it properly. In much R&D scopes were essential from the day they were invented. In the military I suspect that scopes were essential for radar technicians right back to WW2.

[Geordie McBoyne]

I remember way back in the sixties many TV engineers believed that an oscilloscope was an hiderance to to efficient TV repairs, I reckon the reasoning for this was they didn't possess one and they didn't know how to use a 'scope anyway.
My Telequipment instrument is also known as the "Serviscope"  and was made for the TV servicing industry.
Designed in the mid fifties and regarded as a low cost instrument it is interesting to note that the X amplifier is DC coupled from the input to the X plates.  With the exception of the HT rectifier all the valves are the ECF80 triode-pentodes.  X amplifier good for 10Mhz.
Can't find any info about the Russian C15 but I do know some TV workshops employed similar Soviet made instruments.
Found this picture of a Russian made "Ostsillograf OR1"  Even this simple instrument would be a great assistance for TV servicing.

Geordie McBoyne.

[Refugee]

That Russian scope looks a lot more modern than the C15.

[pwdrive]

Repaired thousands of TV's back in the day, generally no 'scope until colour tv arrived, prior to that if there was a raster of some sorts then the screen would guide you, just an AVO and bridging capacitors....I knew how to drive a 'scope back then, we used them as part of the 5 year C&G course, starting with some old Cossor 1035 looking type and eventually fiddling with a Tek.

Quit being a TV engineer in 1986, I'm better now! For me the writing was on the wall with the Digivision (ITT) Last 'scope driven back then was an Hitachi twin timebase job or a Telequipement one (had access to both) nice 'scopes back then, I only ever built one 'scope...3BP1, a bunch of EF50's and a wing and a prayer.

Lawrence.

[peter scott]

Apart from messing about with a VCR 517 from an H2S display with mains derived EHT my first scope 50 years ago was a Cossor 339 (that is still gathering dust in my loft) but it was pretty useless when compared with the little Telequipments that actually had calibrated Y amps and timebases and more useful bandwidth.

Peter