[time-nuts] Interesting Patent

[Magnus Danielson]

From: John Day <johnday at wordsnimages.com>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Interesting Patent
Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 15:33:58 -0400
Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.0.20060516151351.0331ff68 at wordsnimages.com>

> 
> >
> >Hmm... strange... these applications are no match for the Phantastron divider,
> >which Frederic Calland Williams invented in 1941. It did 1/5, 1/6 or 1/10 with
> >a triode and a diode if memory serves me right. My oldest HP counter is
> >virtually loaded with it, and it has a nice trimmer in the back for trimming
> >the power grid frequency division for 1/6 or 1/5 to get the 10 Hz reference
> >counter. However, mine is the de luxe variant with builtin timebase 
> >in the form
> >of a 100 kHz crystal oscillator (whoa!) and then the phantastron is set for
> >1/10 division and is preceeded with 4 phantastrons to divide down from 100 kHz
> >in nice 1/10 steps. Naturally there is two more for the 1 Hz and 0.1 Hz
> >frequencies being used for gating time, so that one has 0.1 s, 1 s and 10 s
> >gating time. Needless to say, it works splendid still today!
> 
> So that was a 524A? I thought the 524A always came with the crystal oscillator.

No, I have a HP 521C which comes with the HP 521A-59B crystal oscillator plugin
module, but the HP 521A has it as an option. The HP 521C also have an
additional counting row and an additional step in the timebase.
Actually, you can supply it with an external time base of any of the
frequencies 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 or 100 cps.

The service manual is available on BAMA, I did the DJVU formating.

> My first counter was a 524B as I recall - the plug-in version of the 
> 524A. It still had the column of neons indicators, but I can recall 
> if it had the meters at the top end. Eventually I got a 524C (or D?) 
> and a selection of plug-ins. I had a couple of video amplifier 
> plug-ins and ripped the guts out of one to put a 150MHz prescaler in 
> there as I recall.
> 
> I was playing a lot with 10-12GHz at the time and I had a 540B 
> transfer oscillator as well. That and the 851/8551B spectrum analyser 
> ensured that I had a well warmed, and very noisy, lab.

Hmm... (looking in HP540B manual), must have been lovely in its time.

Good that you where warm and awake... :P

> Eventually I got a 5245L and a Dymec 2590B which was supplanted for 
> my uses when I got the 5257 (I think it was, 18GHz transfer 
> oscillator). A 431C and a 434A along with the 600 series monstrous 
> klystron generators rounded out the lab..
> 
> It was truly wonderful when the 141T system, the 5345A and the 432C 
> came along! Especially with the 8600 generators including of course 
> the 8640B. Thanks for the reminiscences guys!

Theres a journey. So far I keep quite low frequencies. I can hit 2 GHz with
my current rig, 1.3 GHz until I got my latest counter. I don't fool around at
such high frequencies... or wait... I just realize that I do :P

Cheers,
Magnus