baker@wbc.dec.com (08/03/90)
[Line eaters ?!? What line ea A LOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGGG time ago, there was an article in Popular Electronics on making wet-cell diodes using a vat of sodium borate and water with two electrodes in it, one copper and the other aluminum. The idea was to connect a 6.3 V filament transformer across the electrodes for awhile; the AC would cause a coating (which the article described as a "semiconducter film") to form on the electrodes. After disconnecting the AC source, you could measure a sizeable difference in current flow through the cell, depending on whether the copper or the aluminum electrode was connected to positive. Unfortunately, the forward resistance was real high, so this thing didn't have a lot of pratical value. The article appeared sometime in '64 or '65... Now maybe with three electrodes, and a big enough cell, you could build a power transistor; or maybe an SCR in your bathtub, yeah, yeah, that's it... -Art Baker (All the usual disclaimers...)
haynes@ucscc.UCSC.EDU (99700000) (08/06/90)
In article <1814@mountn.dec.com> baker@wbc.dec.com writes: > A LOOOOONNNNNNGGGGGGGGG time ago, there was an article in > Popular Electronics on making wet-cell diodes using a vat > of sodium borate and water with two electrodes in it, one > copper and the other aluminum. The idea was to connect a I've heard these were quite common in the early days of radio. They were often called 'slop jar' rectifiers. The breakdown voltage is fairly low, so you had to use a lot of jars in series for high voltage. haynes@ucscc.ucsc.edu haynes@ucscc.bitnet ..ucbvax!ucscc!haynes "Any clod can have the facts, but having opinions is an Art." Charles McCabe, San Francisco Chronicle