I didn't want to leave.

I visited an amazing shop a while ago. I wanted an oscilloscope and the local supermarket was right out, apparently, so a quick search on teh interwebs and this goldmine was revealed...

There was more around the corner and behind the outcrop on the right. And even then all stock wasn't accounted for. Despite this the owner knew every item intimately. Well, not in the biblical sense. Ahem.

This is what I went home with:

The top one - a Tektronix 465B. Yes, of course I wanted it *all*, but, you know, space. The prices were stupendous and it was obvious that the owner was a real true equipment geek. There were instruments in the rear recesses of the shop which were straight out of a gothic horror - brass spheres held aloft a glass tube encased in a brass and rosewood cabinet - an actual piece of test equipment used for measuring kilovolts on overhead wires. Huge knife bladed switches and variable resistors where the resistance was set by inserting plugs at intervals along parallel copper bars... And a pile of meters and programmers and signal generators and... what the... I have no idea what some of these things were.

And the smell... Divine.

Anyways. That was a while ago. I offered to advertise the establishment but the proprietor was busy enough without the additional traffic. But I'm sure that if you were within visiting distance of Reading, England and you asked...

http://www.stewart-of-reading.co.uk/