More about Peculiar Parts (14)

| Cold-cathode devices are a type of gas-discharge device that uses a low-pressure gas to produce light. The simplest cold-cathode device is t...

| Do you have fuses everywhere, but not one to replace that which has just blown? Join the club! However, there is an alternative — the polyfu...

| Do you have fuses everywhere, but not one to replace that which has just blown? Join the club! However, there is an alternative — the polyfu...

| While the semiconductor industry has some great innovations, sometimes you can’t beat a real switch! Here we delve into the world of reed re...

| In this issue, we tackle a really peculiar component. So much so, we’ve been unable to find out much about it except for its physical proper...

| Traditional cathode-ray tube (CRT) oscilloscopes are a great tool for observing repetitive signals, but slow sweeps and sporadic signals are...

| In 1976 Texas Instruments (TI) wanted to design a device that would pronounce a word to be spelt out on a keyboard as a way to teach spellin...

| Microcontrollers are used in many of the electronic devices that we use every day. But the multibillion-dollar market for microcontrollers h...

| The idea of representing alphanumeric characters with seven segments started in the early 1900s in order to transmit characters via telegrap...

| In 1939 the Empire State Building used a ‘balun’ in a television antenna feedline for the first time. It’s almost 100 years later and baluns...