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Yea exactly. Anyone with experience with electronics who is willing to work with high voltage and has some knowledge of vacuum tubes could probably make one.

Yea exactly. Anyone with experience with electronics who is willing to work with high voltage and has some knowledge of vacuum tubes could probably make one. Side note: old TV rectifier tubes from the 1950s and 60s were notoriously known for being x ray emitters, and were often made with leaded glass or kept inside shielded enclosures specifically because of the X-rays. So X-ray emitters were literally in everyday standard consumer electronics back then! Kind of crazy to think about these days...

willis936 5y ago
And the TVs themselves were three particle accelerators steered by magnetic coils slamming voltage rails of a few kV 15,750 times a second. The beams emitted X-Ray Bremsstrahlung. In everyone's home. The last truly cool piece of physics in the house today is the magnetron, which is pretty damn cool.
- dekhn 5y ago
  My kitchen microwave kills any 2.4ghz wifi within 30 feet.
x0x0 5y ago
Not just consumer electronics. We used to install xray machines in shoe stores to see how well your shoes fit. Common through the 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope
- buescher 5y ago
  They were certainly still around in the dusty corners of old shoe stores in the seventies and eighties but I never saw one used or even turned on. People were pretty aware of the hazards of that kind of thing by the fifties and sixties.
buescher 5y ago
Exactly, indeed. One of the links I gave shows how to use a 6BK4B rectifier tube for the purpose. No special X-ray tube or glasswork required. Most of the high voltage parts can be scavenged from old color tvs or monitors. Remember, though, only bad things will happen and the inside of a color tv is not a place of honor, no great deed is commemorated there, nothing of value is stored there... Edit: that might sound tongue-in-cheek but please take it as hahah, only serious. You can hurt yourself with these things, you probably don't have a good reason to be experimenting with them, and if you do need to learn how to work with high voltage or ionizing radiation safely, this is not the place and I am not teaching you.
teeray 5y ago
Makes you wonder if that’s where the whole “don’t sit too close to the TV” thing came from
- buescher 5y ago
  It does, at least in part. https://www.rfcafe.com/references/radio-electronics/tv-xrays-radio-electronics-june-1969.htm https://www.rfcafe.com/references/radio-electronics/tv-xrays... https://www.repairfaq.org/samnew/tvfaq/tvaihxray.htm https://www.repairfaq.org/samnew/tvfaq/tvaihxray.htm

willis936 5y ago

And the TVs themselves were three particle accelerators steered by magnetic coils slamming voltage rails of a few kV 15,750 times a second. The beams emitted X-Ray Bremsstrahlung. In everyone's home. The last truly cool piece of physics in the house today is the magnetron, which is pretty damn cool.

dekhn 5y ago
My kitchen microwave kills any 2.4ghz wifi within 30 feet.

x0x0 5y ago

Not just consumer electronics. We used to install xray machines in shoe stores to see how well your shoes fit. Common through the 70s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope

buescher 5y ago
They were certainly still around in the dusty corners of old shoe stores in the seventies and eighties but I never saw one used or even turned on. People were pretty aware of the hazards of that kind of thing by the fifties and sixties.

buescher 5y ago

Exactly, indeed. One of the links I gave shows how to use a 6BK4B rectifier tube for the purpose. No special X-ray tube or glasswork required. Most of the high voltage parts can be scavenged from old color tvs or monitors. Remember, though, only bad things will happen and the inside of a color tv is not a place of honor, no great deed is commemorated there, nothing of value is stored there... Edit: that might sound tongue-in-cheek but please take it as hahah, only serious. You can hurt yourself with these things, you probably don't have a good reason to be experimenting with them, and if you do need to learn how to work with high voltage or ionizing radiation safely, this is not the place and I am not teaching you.

teeray 5y ago

Makes you wonder if that’s where the whole “don’t sit too close to the TV” thing came from

buescher 5y ago
It does, at least in part. https://www.rfcafe.com/references/radio-electronics/tv-xrays-radio-electronics-june-1969.htm https://www.rfcafe.com/references/radio-electronics/tv-xrays... https://www.repairfaq.org/samnew/tvfaq/tvaihxray.htm https://www.repairfaq.org/samnew/tvfaq/tvaihxray.htm