I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine concerning the written portion of our FCC exams we took in front of an FCC examiner back in 1972. For the Advanced Class exam, I distinctly recall a short essay-type question where I was required to draw a schematic diagram of an oscillator. It was likely a Hartley, Colpitts, or Pierce.
Does anyone else who took their Advanced Class exam in front of an FCC examiner recall drawing a schematic diagram?
No.
I earned my Advanced in 1968 and Extra in 1970. The tests were all multiple choice.
Here's the history:
Prior to about 1961, the FCC written exams for amateur licenses other than Novice were "blue book" exams, with essay, draw-a-diagram and show-your-work calculation questions. The Novice was all-multiple-choice from the beginning.
Then in 1960 or 61 the FCC announced they were changing all the written exams to multiple choice. Be sure to bring some #2 pencils!
BUT
They didn't just change to multiple-choice immediately. Instead, field offices were instructed to use up their existing stocks of blue-book exam materials before changing over to the new multiple-choice tests.
Different field offices had different numbers of people being tested and different stockpiles of test materials, so, for several years, the kind of test you got depended on where you went for the test.
But there's more!
From January 1,1953 to some time in 1967, the Advanced was closed to new issues. If you had an Advanced you could renew or modify it, but nobody could get a new one. There was no Advanced test available. Then as now, if someone with a General wanted an Extra they had to do it in one go.
Then came the first changes of "Incentive Licensing" in 1967. The Advanced was reopened to new issues, the Novice term went to 2 years, and some of the rules changed. The old Extra written test was split into two parts - the first part became the Advanced test, and the second became the Extra test.
And all the old blue-book test materials were scrapped. All tests became multiple choice.
So, if you passed a US amateur license exam in after 1967 - or even earlier, depending on where you were - it was all multiple choice. If you passed the Advanced after it was reopened in 1967, the test was all multiple choice, because it was a new test, not the one used in 1952 and earlier.
So why do people think/remember otherwise? Two reasons:
1) If someone got an Extra, General, Technician or Conditional before 1967, particularly at a less-busy FCC office, they may have taken the old "blue-book" test - and that's what they remember.
2) (The big one) - The ARRL License Manuals, and probably other study guides, were all in "blue book" format,
even years after the tests changed. A typical LM question might be "draw a diagram of a pentode crystal oscillator using the grid-plate and modified-Pierce circuits". Or "explain why a triode RF amplifier would need to be neutralized". Or "calculate the length of a half-wave wire dipole for 7100 kc." And when studying, that's what we learned to do. Then, in the actual test, there would be a schematic diagram and we'd be asked to identify it. Or, as was on my tests, there was a component missing, and the multiple choices would suggest what part had to be added, and where, to make it work.
That's the real history.
73 de Jim, N2EY