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Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month we celebrate 60 years of Practical Electronics and recount the tale of how the
magazine came about. Net Work also gives an account of Britain’s often overlooked influence
when the Internet’s foundations were first taking shape.
A
decade ago, I wrote a two-part
piece celebrating fifty years of
Practical Electronics, Britain’s first
hobbyist magazine dedicated to exploiting transistor and integrated circuits.
This month’s edition sees us reaching
our diamond jubilee, as the November
2024 issue marks sixty years of successful publication.
The November 1964 issue was released in an era that embraced the race
to the Moon; many developments in
modern electronics owe their origins to
the 1960s space program.
The roots of Practical Electronics
date much further back, though, to
an age when semiconductors were
inconceivable and fabricating a DIY
‘wireless’ meant scratch-building a radio receiver using high-voltage valves
(vacuum tubes), eagerly following the
skeleton plans printed in newsletters
and magazines of the time.
At the turn of last century, the impact
of radio communications was as momentous as the Internet, email and social
media have been in today’s digital age.
Radio constructors were eager to ‘tune
in’ to the new medium and they relished
the challenge of using their practical and
theoretical skills to build radio receivers
and aerial arrays of every description.
Primitive earpieces hooked to home-
made receivers buzzed and crackled to
the sound of radio transmissions that
would eventually be broadcast from all
around the world.
The earliest radio magazine I’m
aware of first appeared over 110 years
ago. The Marconigraph of April 1911
was published in London by none other than Marconi Wireless themselves.
They marked the new era of radio with
these opening lines:
“Seventeen years ago [in 1894] the
idea of wireless telegraphy for the
transmission of wireless messages
through space was regarded as an utter
impossibility, yet within a year of that
date the ‘impossible’ was achieved, the
outcome of which is the present day
world-wide system of wireless communication by land and sea.”
The Marconigraph aimed to acquaint
the ‘lay reader’ with the possibilities of
“this most marvellous new invention”
and the journal vividly illustrated the
explosive growth in radio transmissions being witnessed in every corner
of the world. Early experiments with
aircraft-based radio reception were also
described. Marconi’s magazine became
the respected title Wireless World a few
years later.
One London-based publisher, George
Newnes Ltd, started printing a literary
newsletter in the late 19th century that
was a precursor to journalism and some
of the earliest British newspaper titles.
In my collection are some original
Hobbies and Practical Wireless magazines from 1932, published by Geo.
Newnes, which contained a very broad
array of projects catering for wholesome DIY hobbies, including woodwork and fretwork, stamp collecting,
model-making and German-made ‘Trix’
– an early form of Meccano that for
budding ‘home engineers’ was a sensation at the time.
This early hobby magazine, printed
on newsprint in three spot-colours, included skeleton plans for multi-valve
wireless receivers, three-valve circuits
being the most popular. An astonishing
range of every conceivable radio component was sold by a thriving mail order industry.
Just to complete the picture, amusing
‘small ads’ in H&PW featured freelyavailable air pistols and fearsomelooking catapults, exclaiming that “No
boy is a boy without these!” Shiny new
bicycles were advertised at a cost of £3
15s as well.
A multitude of magazines
The rise of Camm’s ‘Practicals’
Hobbies and Practical Wireless magazine,
published in 1932 by George Newnes Ltd.
With fascination in radio broadcasting intensifying, there soon appeared a
multitude of magazines for radio constructors to choose from, such as Popular
Wireless, a weekly title for listeners and
hobbyists that in 1922 promised readers “the world’s latest hobby fully explained”.
Many titles appeared weekly, but as
post-war paper shortages severely inhibited the production of magazines
and newspapers, some were forced
to adopt a monthly timetable instead.
Other titles included Radio Constructor, which became Radio & Electronics Constructor that many of us saw
jostling for position on bustling newsstands up until the 1980s.
Editor’s note: the first issue of Wireless Weekly was published in Australia
on the 4th of August 1922, eventually
leading to Silicon Chip.
In the 1930s, a Newnes editor, the
now legendary F.J. Camm, started a
range of ‘Practical’ magazine titles
aimed at the many hands-on, sleevesup home mechanics, motorists and
wireless enthusiasts who took such
pursuits in their stride.
Practical Wireless would become a
stand-alone title, and F.J. Camm was sympathetic about catering for those entering
the world of hobby wireless construction
for the first time. In the launch issue of
September 24th 1932, he promised:
“Simplicity of Treatment AND, of
great importance, particular care will be
taken in presenting the contents in clear
and simple language. Highly technical
terms will be dispensed with wherever
simple description can be employed,
and diagrams will be prepared and explained so as to be readily understood.
Thus the reader with a modest technical
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Practical Electronics | November | 2024
Toying with the idea of homing in on
this new market, George Newnes Ltd.
considered creating a new magazine
with a working title of Practical Electronics and Hi Fi. In 1962, Newnes recruited ex-RAF wireless operator and
former EMI technical publications staff
member Fred Bennett, who duly started
work at Newnes supposedly as a subeditor on Practical Wireless, learning
how the publishing industry worked.
Fred wondered to himself whether his
role was really necessary, though. “Even
I could see that there was hardly any
need for additional staff”, he reflected
many years later. Was something brewing on the electronics magazine front?
Pondering Practical Electronics
Newnes’ ‘Practicals’ magazines captured
the post-war zeitgeist of British house
holders, hobbyists and motorists. Mixing
mortar and climbing scaffolding was no
problem for enthusiastic DIYers!
knowledge, or even the keen amateur,
will find PRACTICAL WIRELESS appeals to him as well as to the reader
with a sound technical knowledge.”
Such re-assurance was at odds with
Camm’s views of Do-It-Yourself enthusiasts, though. Some years later, at a
time when some householders could
tackle even quite ambitious homebuilding and repair projects for themselves –
including building an entire house! – a
novice wrote to a newspaper lamenting
the lack of guidance that was available
to budding DIYers.
He hoped that projects and articles
might expand more on the fundamental
skills needed to complete basic tasks.
In a brutal July 1958 Editorial in another ‘Practical’ title that he edited, The
Practical Householder, Camm branded
those without the practical skills as
“simpletons”, adding that “for those
who are mentally incapable of learning,
nothing can be done. There are dunderheads in all walks of life.” Charming!
Practical Wireless became a very familiar sight on British newsstands;
sales reached 120,000 copies a month
as interest in radio technology continued unabated.
However, another branch of spaceage technology was emerging that offered ‘solid-state’ solutions for many
other electronic applications, not just
radio. The transistor had arrived on
the electronics scene. New circuit techniques were fast being developed and
more magazine pages were also needed
to cater for an abundance of advertisers, such was the hobbyist’s appetite for
constructing electronic projects using
these new semiconductor devices.
Practical Electronics | November | 2024
Later that year, Managing Editor Bert
Collins, the successor to F.J. Camm
(who died in 1959 aged just 63), offered Fred the opportunity to work on a
new magazine that would complement
Practical Wireless.
The new title had been nailed down
simply as Practical Electronics, although a US magazine of the same
name was first published five years
earlier, in 1957. Published by Fawcett
of New York, it offered designs for a
pocket-size transistor radio and transistor checker, amongst other projects.
It’s likely that this new venture was
why Fred had been recruited by Newnes
all along. Fred jumped at the chance,
and set about designing a pilot issue
of Practical Electronics from scratch,
while still working on the PW desk.
Fred described how he then spent a
lengthy and anxious year waiting for
feedback about his proposals when,
suddenly, at the end of 1963, Bert Collins gave him the green light. An all-new
Practical Electronics would launch before the end of the following year.
With a new office location to accommodate their team, PE would be independent of its wireless forebear. The
first November 1964 issue of Practical
Electronics was a success, with 115,000
copies being sold.
Reflecting on the matter many years
later, Fred had nothing but praise for
the management at George Newnes Ltd,
whose foresight recognised the potential of newly-emerging applied semiconductor electronics.
The magazine set the pace in Britain
for producing advanced, professionally
presented and sometimes highly complex hobby electronic projects. It was
largely unchallenged for many years.
Wikipedia has more details on George
Newnes Ltd at https://w.wiki/B3pS
With publication of Practical Electronics in full swing in a very vibrant
market, Fred realised that they had
“begun to tap an inexhaustible source
of talent... It was as though electronics
enthusiasts had been anticipating our
appearance.”
Such was the embarrassment of
riches submitted by highly skilled and
immensely talented electronics engineers and professionals of the time that
the magazine never faced a shortage of
material. This was also true of the readers’ ‘circuit ideas’ column called Ingenuity Unlimited, which first appeared
in May 1965 and was soon heavily
over-subscribed. It inspired me to submit my own little article in the mid
1970s, earning me £5 pocket money!
PE also rallied to support novices or
less gifted readers. Fred Bennett was
keen to engage with beginners in electronics and encourage them to learn
and broaden their skills and knowledge. There was plenty to challenge the
hobbyist, with a wide variety of digital
and analog projects, tutorials, news
briefs and those all-important mailorder adverts packed into every issue.
In 1968, Fred offered a young Mike
Kenward a job as a technical sub-editor.
Mike would eventually assume the role
of Editor and publisher many years
later, establishing Wimborne Publishing Ltd for the purpose. The October
1974 edition celebrated the magazine’s
first decade, acknowledging that the
integrated circuit had since become
“universally popular” with constructors pursuing their hobby.
An Everyday experience
Fred developed a sister magazine title
in 1971 – Everyday Electronics – written
by the same team. It was aimed at beginners and younger readers looking to build
The first edition of Practical Electronics in
November 1964 catered for constructors
seeking to build a wide range of
semiconductor-based projects.
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Everyday
Electronics was
designed to offer
simpler projects
and tutorials for
beginners and younger hobbyists.
less-challenging electronic circuits and
gadgets. Coincidentally, the June 1967
issue of Radio-Electronics, published in
the USA by Gernsback, was a special edition showcasing ‘Everyday Electronics’.
‘Teach-In’ tutorials appeared in EE
right from the outset as well, and were
instrumental in helping readers to
develop and expand their skills and
knowledge. As a testimony to Fred’s
vision, we still publish a dedicated
Teach-In series to this very day.
On a personal note, I once had the
pleasure of speaking with Fred Bennett. I owe my entire electronics publishing career to the support and generous encouragement that he gave me
during my teenage hobbyist years. You
can see my efforts in PDF format at
https://pemag.au/link/ac0z
Fred passed away in 2006, aged 85.
A tribute written by Mike Kenward appeared on our legacy website, which
is still online, at http://www.epemag.
com/vault/0306.htm
Both titles changed hands and went
their separate ways for a while, then
merging into Everyday Practical Electronics (EPE) before finally settling
down as PE once again when Editor
Matt Pulzer acquired the title.
This year, Practical Electronics
opened a new chapter in its story when
Australia’s Silicon Chip took over at the
wheel; it’s a perfect fit as PE had been
publishing Silicon Chip projects since
January 2006 after our home-grown
capacity to source, edit, publish and
technically support hobbyist projects
had finally run its course.
I previously described in more detail
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the often tumultuous journey of the
magazines in my 50 Years celebration
in 2014, which can still be downloaded as PDFs from https://www.epemag.
com/resources.html
Additional resources describing the
history of, and people behind, both titles were written by former Editor Mike
Kenward and currently remain online
at our legacy website; see https://www.
epemag.com/epe-history.html
I suppose I’m memorialising the story
of this magazine for the benefit of future readers and contributors, in case
these finer details are eventually lost
in time. With sixty years of publishing
now behind us, and with dedicated
and committed staff at Silicon Chip
now firmly established at the helm,
there’s plenty for the Practical
Electronics reader to look forward
to. Modern electronics has become accessible in a way that Marconi
never envisaged more than a century
ago. Hopefully it’s not tempting fate to
say that I’ll look forward to seeing our
Platinum anniversary in 2034!
veloping a ‘survivable’ communications network for military use. The US
non-profit RAND Corporation (short for
Research & Development) benefited
from receiving open-ended funding for
researching military projects like these,
so money was no object.
Credit goes to a young RAND engineer,
Paul Baran, for designing an early form of
distributed communications or ‘message
switching’ system for the military that
could withstand an enemy hit. There is
more background to this at https://www.
rand.org/about/history/baran.html
According to Janet Abbate, Baran
had no confidence in the contractors’
ability to build it and so, rather than
risk being discredited, he scrapped the
proposals. Nevertheless, his ideas were
widely published and would become
very influential in the coming years.
However, US scientists and academics didn’t understand the need for ‘survivability’ at the time, so they weren’t
interested in resilient, bomb-proof (literally) message switching. Thus, the
concept went largely undeveloped.
The Internet’s early days
The white heat of technology
A one-page Net Work column first
appeared in the August 1996 issue and
a URL appeared on the cover shortly
afterwards. Now seems a good time to
re-visit the roots of the technology that
gave rise to this column to begin with.
In July 1996, when online search and
reference resources were very thin on
the ground, I wrote a feature in Everyday Practical Electronics titled “The
Internet – What’s in it for you?”
That article spelled out the story
of the Internet thus far. You can still
download a PDF scan for free from
https://pemag.au/Shop/3/7367
No-one could know, however, how
the Internet would ultimately dominate every corner of our society twenty
or thirty years later.
Much has been documented about the
creation of the Internet itself, so I won’t
repeat all the details again. A book entitled “Inventing the Internet” by Janet
Abbate (ISBN 0-262-01172-7, 1999, MIT
Press, 264pp) is a rare and thoroughly
researched but highly readable academic work. It offers a detailed and granular
account describing the often turbulent
development of the Internet.
It’s one of the best reference works
that I’ve come across and I’ll draw from
some of its material for the remainder
of this month’s article. Moreover, it recounts the often overlooked contributions that Britain’s unsung scientists
and developers made when the Internet’s foundations were being laid.
The launch of Sputnik by the USSR
in 1957 galvanised America into de-
Here in Britain, Harold Wilson’s Labour government championed the drive
for new technologies and industries.
His famous ‘white heat of technology’
conference speech in 1963 hoped to inspire the country into embracing a scientific revolution, dispensing with old
restrictive practices that hampered the
country’s economic growth.
The British Library website hosts
a recording of the speech at https://
pemag.au/link/ac10
“Inventing the Internet” by Janet Abbate
offers a detailed insight into the Internet’s
evolution, highlighting the influence of the
NPL and is an easy-enough read.
Practical Electronics | November | 2024
Janet Abbate makes the point that
the critical difference in Wilson’s approach, compared with the USA, was
that Britain under Labour would fund
new technology to stimulate commercial and industrial production and
boost the economy, rather than use it
for military applications.
In contrast, in 1960s America, key
university centres of technological
excellence were created and given an
open-ended design brief. They were
tasked with investigating and solving
problems in building the nation’s defence systems.
It was emphasised that there would be
no limitations to the research and there
would be no project-specificity either.
Doubtless, this approach encouraging
‘blue sky thinking’ would bring out the
best of their students and academics.
Ultimately, it gave rise to the ARPANET
computer communications network.
It would be unfair to contrast this with
Britain’s own research programmes.
For starters, the US government’s nearlimitless funding dwarfed anything
available in post-war Britain. Secondly,
the US approach was that system designers were building their own network
for their own use, but Britain was heading in a different direction, focussing on
developing user-friendly computer systems for commercial use instead.
A major part of Britain’s computer research was carried out by the National
Physical Laboratory (NPL), which had
something of a shoestring budget.
One celebrated NPL computing engineer from Wales, Donald Davies, was
instrumental in devising a new method
of transmitting digital data that did not
clog up and slow expensive telephone
lines. He was working on the concept of
splitting messages into smaller parts, to
transmit data over long distances via a
distributed network. Davies is credited
with coining the term ‘packet switching’.
Unknown to him at the time, another
form of ‘packet switching’ had previously been developed in the USA by
Paul Baran, but the military application
was not in the public domain.
Expensive timeshares
In an era of very expensive mainframe computers, a system of ‘batch
processing’ of data was used to keep
them continually operating. The concept of ‘timesharing’ was then devised
to spread a computer’s workload between multiple users. This enabled
computers to run several programs in a
multiplexing fashion, making the best
of expensive computer time.
Davies, still working on a very tight
NPL budget, learned of timesharing
during a visit to the USA in 1965. He
saw it as a way of maximising costly
computer resources rather than being a
‘survivable’ datacomms system.
In 1966, ARPANET was just the germ
of an idea and it seems the developers
were originally unaware of Paul Baran’s pioneering work. In 1967, NPL’s
Roger Scantlebury presented a paper in
the USA describing their work on packet switching, and they explained NPL’s
ongoing research into building its own
network, called the Mark I.
It is clear that NPL’s own research
influenced the design of the American
ARPANET. Furthermore, British NPL
scientists are credited with ‘joining
the dots’ that brought RAND’s original work and ARPANET’s developers
together to create a resilient packetswitching network.
Donald Davies is also recognised as
the proponent of a dedicated network
interface computer. As early network
trials commenced in the USA, the first
‘router’ (a Honeywell IMP – Interface
Message Processor) was developed.
Built like a tank, the wardrobe-size ‘peripheral’ needed a helicopter and forklift truck to install it at UCLA on time.
Donald Davies also convinced the
Americans that network bandwidth
would be the key to everything so, according to Abbate, ARPANET’s Larry
Roberts duly upped the network spec.
to a dizzying 56 kilobits per second, the
maximum possible over analog phone
lines (as every dial-up modem user of
the 1990s would later discover).
A scaled-down network
Donald Davies of the National Physical
Laboratory describes the concept of
packet switching in a 1998 TV interview
for the Open University (from BBC TV).
Practical Electronics | November | 2024
Back home in Britain, Donald Davies
remained keen to develop a network
timesharing client that anybody could
use, but he struggled with meagre budgets and a lack of resources. Furthermore, the General Post Office (GPO),
which operated Britain’s analog phone
system at the time, wasn’t interested in
Roger Scantlebury of the NPL explained
their work on packet switching to an
American audience (BBC/Open University).
digital data communications anyway.
The British government dropped the
ball. NPL proceeded to build Mark I, its
own scaled-down network, using a Honeywell 516 computer. Very unusually,
and showing great foresight, system resources were attached to the network
where they could be accessed by network clients, rather than being hosted
by isolated client computers. An upgraded Mark II network followed which,
astonishingly, ran from 1973 to 1986.
Eventually, the GPO relented and
after four years launched a packetswitching network in 1977. However,
its next-generation system would use
American hardware.
As the American network continued
to grow, otherwise-incompatible University sites connected together using
the new common protocol of TCP/IP
(transmission control protocol/internet
protocol). A mobile data experiment
based in Hawaii proved successful, and
a satellite link with Norway followed,
initially exchanging seismic data.
The University College London connected with Norway shortly afterwards.
In the late 1980s, the ARPANET was
finally pensioned off when control of
its infrastructure was transferred to the
National Science Foundation Network
(NSFNET). The Internet would then be
‘demilitarised’ and commercialised.
Much of the outstanding work done
at the National Physical Laboratory by
Donald Davies and his team was technically ahead of its time but, lacking funds,
it could never compete with America’s
fully-funded military ARPANET.
Davies died in 2000, and we’ll never
know what the ‘net might have looked
like if the National Physical Laboratory
had managed to design a messaging system on a much grander scale. At least
Britain’s hand was on the tiller when the
idea of packet switching networks was
first floated nearly sixty years ago.
As always, you can email the author
PE
at alan<at>epemag.net
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