[en] Accurate measurements of the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) can provide useful tests of cosmological theories. The data set existing in 1982 has been summarized on a number of occasions and is shown. To first approximation the CMB is characterized by a single temperature and thus has a blackbody spectrum over the frequency range from 0.02 to 24 cm^-1. The error limits given for these experiments are dominated by systematic errors and are often very subjective. Consequently, it is not clear how to analyze the data set in a valid way. The general impression, however, is of a scatter in the high frequency data that is somewhat larger than would be expected from the given error limits. We have designed a new apparatus to measure the spectrum of the CMB in the frequency range from 3 to 10 cm^-1. 13 references, 5 figures