Strange Device Found in House - Transmitter?
 

I hang out at home and garden forums at Houzz and ran across this thread:

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions...old-house?n=49

These people found a strange device in the bedroom closet of their 1964 house, a metal box on the ceiling with a 3-ft aluminum rod sticking down. Box has a 6J6 tube inside it. In the hallway is a lockable key switch. In the basement is a vintage circuit board with cardboard caps on it. Whole thing looks original to the house. Everyone's speculating whether it's an alarm, jammer, transmitter, or what.

Thought you guys might be interested. Pics are posted in the thread.

:scratch2:

Looks like it's an in-house cable or antenna 'repeater'. Hooked to F-connector cables and a Wingard thingy in the basement. Whole-house wireless cable.

Chip

But vacuum tube powered, from 1964? There was no cable yet, for one thing. No VCR's or any other sources to plug into it. Only an antenna for OTA broadcasts.

I agree it looks like some kind of a transmitter, though.

Could have been a large, directional antenna on the roof, tied into the 'repeater'. Don't know where the house is, but it might have been a 'fringe' area.

Chip

It is awfully simple for an alarm system. But then... why the key switch? I agree, an antenna amplifier/repeater seems likely... but why the key switch? O_o

Also... if it was an antenna thingy, where's the incoming antenna wire? 3 small wires coming in, that's it. And why is the antenna isolated with a giant porcelain thingy?

Very, very odd.

Russian Spies!

I'm thinking it's some snake oil device that was supposed to help you sleep.

One of the other sites it is on they think the tube based section is a UHF based motion detector. That the key switch and the exposed circuit board with the sprague lytics on it look like they were part of an alarm system (though the circuit board could be part of a doorbell system).

I highly doubt the boxes with coax in the basement have anything to do with (or any electrical connection to) the tube TX upstairs....Probably the distribution amp for a normal TV antenna, and or cable TV hook up.

These are the kind of questions that come up when the original owners of a house are technically savvy and the new ones are not so much....