electronics history: Crystadyne

Oct 05, 2005 3 Replies

Is there any possibility, that "Crystadyne" originating around 1924 (you can google for it) can be the lost invention from "Robert Denk" (google for it), who built a radio without tubes in 1948. Robert invented a device which he found accidentally working, functioning in an mil. receiver in world war II. I think Crystadyne had no chance in 1924, because the tubes coming up, had a good physical basis, compared to a cat whisker.



Are there clues, that the invention of the transistor was based (not a good word) upon the crystadyne principle as a starting input to the 3 ? For me it looks like that the transistor was an "ordered" invention.



I'm just trying to built an enhanced detector circuit with a tunnel diode, which is a predictable, reproducable device, instead of a whisker.



BTW has anyone a simple circuit to measure a tunnel diode? Think to add a resitor to avoid the neg. slope and then calculate it out.



May be there is a better group to ask all this?



Rudolf Drabek (google me, only one with elecronics background)



Yes, thanks. I know from Oleg and from Lilienfeld (was it FET?)

So Robert Denk invented, may be, a 2nd time what Oleg invented earlier. There are some refs in the net how to built a Zincite crystal by use of some Zink covered iron sheets and a gas burner for treatment.

Rudy

Have you heard of Oleg Lossov (Losev?) who used ZnO crystals (Zincite) to make Amplifiers (5MHz), Superhetrodyne Receivers, Oscillators, and other circuits in the early 1920s? All by poking wires into the crystals? And applying the right bias.

These were Crystadyne circuits.

Tubes were still struggling and forget Transistors.

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for one reference.

I found the reference in Thomas Lee's Text on CMOS RF Circuits.

Robert

...and do not forget the *three* transistor patents by J. E. Lilienfeld (1745175, 1877140 and 1900018).

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