What is the most powerful vacuum tube ever made?

Yes, also known as nuclear war detector. I have a bigger one too, with some ionisation chamber, that runs on a 1.5V D cell. But these pens are plated with real gold!!! Could not leave it there. Then I have real GM counters, and a gamma spectrometer. And know how to duck under the table in case the bomb goes off. Nothing to worry about :-)

"Bad Ground"

I wrote

Here some more pictures, The set, real gold plating! the socket top right is where you plug in the pens to charge the electrometer. http://217.120.43.67/nuclear/dosi_meter_PP-4127_IMG_3747.GIF

The circuit diagram, glued on the inside, really cool! http://217.120.43.67/nuclear/dosi_meter_PP-4127_circuit_diagram_IMG_3737.GIF

The inside, even a spare bulb! The bulb provides light so you can read the scales in the pen, reading the pen against daylight works too. http://217.120.43.67/nuclear/dosi_meter_meter_PP-4127_measurement_and_reset_unit_IMG_3734.JPG

Well, I should imagine a scheme like that would introduce an unacceptable amount of noise. ;-) Nice to see you back, Jan!

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I've always wondered what the plate curves of those things look like. They make extraordinary claims. I don't see how they're going to get a low voltage drop for switching operations.

As we still don't have cold-cathode 300Bs in TO-247 packages, I have other doubts about such technology; but, given that these are very much in the domain of military secrets and "munitions", I can see there might be reason for that. (Speaking of EMP protection, you could just as well wire one as a blocking oscillator and generate an offensive quantity of ESD, intense enough to be called EMP as such.)

Tim