23 Facts About Cat's-whisker detector

Crystal Cat's-whisker detector is an obsolete electronic component used in some early 20th century radio receivers that consists of a piece of crystalline mineral which rectifies the alternating current radio signal.

The most common type was the so-called cat's whisker Cat's-whisker detector, which consisted of a piece of crystalline mineral, usually galena, with a fine wire touching its surface.

The audio frequency current produced by the Cat's-whisker detector passed through the earphone causing the earphone's diaphragm to vibrate, pushing on the air to create sound waves.

Crystal Cat's-whisker detector consisted of an electrical contact between the surface of a semiconducting crystalline mineral and either a metal or another crystal.

The construction of the Cat's-whisker detector depended on the type of crystal used, as it was found different minerals varied in how much contact area and pressure on the crystal surface was needed to make a sensitive rectifying contact.

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The carborundum Cat's-whisker detector was popular because its sturdy contact did not require readjustment each time it was used, like the delicate cat whisker devices.

The silicon Cat's-whisker detector was popular because it had much the same advantages as carborundum; its firm contact could not be jarred loose by vibration and it did not require a bias battery, so it saw wide use in commercial and military radiotelegraphy stations.

The crystal Cat's-whisker detector was the most successful of many Cat's-whisker detector devices invented during this era.

Cat's-whisker detector studied copper pyrite, iron pyrite, galena and copper antimony sulfide .

In 1906 he obtained a German patent on a galena cat whisker Cat's-whisker detector, but was too late to obtain patents in other countries.

Cat's-whisker detector first used a coherer consisting of a steel spring pressing against a metal surface with a current passing through it.

Cat's-whisker detector experimented with many substances as contact detectors, focusing on galena.

Cat's-whisker detector's detectors consisted of a small galena crystal with a metal point contact pressed against it with a thumbscrew, mounted inside a closed waveguide ending in a horn antenna to collect the microwaves.

Cat's-whisker detector realized that amplifying crystals could be an alternative to the fragile, expensive, energy-wasting vacuum tube.

Cat's-whisker detector used biased negative resistance crystal junctions to build solid-state amplifiers, oscillators, and amplifying and regenerative radio receivers, 25 years before the invention of the transistor.

Cat's-whisker detector's technology was dubbed "Crystodyne" by science publisher Hugo Gernsback one of the few people in the West who paid attention to it.

Cat's-whisker detector published his experiments in 1927 in a Russian journal, and the 16 papers he published on LEDs between 1924 and 1930 constitute a comprehensive study of this device.

Cat's-whisker detector measured rates of evaporation of benzine from the crystal surface and found it was not accelerated when light was emitted, concluding that the luminescence was a "cold" light not caused by thermal effects.

Cat's-whisker detector theorized correctly that the explanation of the light emission was in the new science of quantum mechanics, speculating that it was the inverse of the photoelectric effect discovered by Albert Einstein in 1905.

Cat's-whisker detector wrote to Einstein about it, but did not receive a reply.

The temperamental, unreliable action of the crystal Cat's-whisker detector had always been a barrier to its acceptance as a standard component in commercial radio equipment and was one reason for its rapid replacement.

In 1949 at Bell Labs William Shockley derived the Shockley diode equation which gives the nonlinear exponential current–voltage curve of a crystal Cat's-whisker detector, observed by scientists since Braun and Bose, which is responsible for rectification.

The MIT Radiation Laboratory launched a project to develop microwave Cat's-whisker detector diodes, focusing on silicon, which had the best detecting properties.