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Thanks to my dad, many years ago I came into possession of a fair amount of cold war-era Civil Defense radiological monitoring equipment. One such item is the CDV-700 Geiger counter pictured above. For years the headphone jack had been broken which meant that I couldn’t use it to hear the telltale clicks whenever it detected radiation.
After a friend stopped by tonight to pick up some parts (a box of tubes that had been collecting dust) our conversation had me wondering if some of the things around my house are radioactive, so I set to work fixing the rather odd headphone jack. After fixing it I was able to establish that none of the odd tubes or aircraft equipment in my living room was radioactive.
Hopefully in the next few days (or weeks) I’ll find the time to photograph all of this old gear just to document it. It’s not particularly special or rare equipment, but it was a very physical tool through which I learned about both the fear of nuclear war and how a society can be placated by giving it the perception of control in the face of overwhelming force. I love having this stuff around for both the technical and historical aspect of such detection equipment and the memories of playing around with it while growing up.