First o'scope I saw used was in ?63? an amateur radio friend of mine. In those days two of the locals were building / modifying gear to work "OSCAR" (Orbiting Satellite Carrying Amateur Radio) I don't remember which version this was, somewhere between 63 and 66. They used 2M FM "trunk mount" radios already converted to amateur, and recrystalled to fall into the 432mhz area of Oscar. The 2M (144-148mhz) output of the transmitter was fed to "homebrew" varactor diode tripler, with a downconverter (homebrew) from 432 to an HF receiver.
The first o'scopes I had my hands on were in the Navy. In ET-A school in 68-69 we were introduced to the old OS-8, which is synchronized sweep, not triggered. At some point we were introduced to Tektronix and HP scopes.
When I went to GCA school, we fiddled for weeks learning the onboard syncroscope provided with the RADAR a horrible contraption, only to find, when I arrived at Miramar, that the factory had racked a brand new HP into the equipment. At that time a HP 130? something? or 140? I'll have to look it up. Still ALL tubes
My first scope out of the Navy was an old Dumont synco sweep and the transformer died shortly. I made a hell of a heavy fix by putting TWO junk transformers in the thing to rig a new power supply for it
Since then I've had some of the Heathkits, a few Tek, and nowadays I've still got a couple of 465 tek along with an Tek 220 series digital scope.
Here is a photo of the GCA radar training lab at NAS Glynco, GA with the awful, the huge, the heavy, the ridiculous, the obsolete LOLOL syncroscope up on the pedestal in the center
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