Alexis writes:
I've got here some electronic modules made by
Venner Electronics LTD,
Kingston By-Pass, New Malden, Surrey. One is a Transistor Decade Unit
type TS.10/5 and the other just has Type TS 11/HF on it, where 11/HF is
scratched into the metal label.
Opening one reveals a number of Mullard OC44 Ge
transistors.
What on earth are they for? I can imagine they're
for some sort of
digital machine or even a whole computer, but I can't find any
information about them or the company.
Venner Electronics made lab equipment in the 60's and maybe early 70's.
What I've seen are digital voltmeters, frequency and period counters, etc.
The decade counter modules you have seem most applicable to frequency
counter and timing applications but I think they were used as part of the
A/D scheme for some of the digital voltmeters too.
HP, Berkley Nucleonics, Ortec, and other companies used in their equipment,
and sold to other companies as well, decade counter modules etc.
from the 50's onward. I presume "Transistor
Decade Unit" was to
differentiate it from the "Tube Decade Unit"s
that I am very familiar with.
If sold to the nuclear instrumentation industry they are usually called
"scalers" instead of "counters".
Some have direct readout of 0-9 lamps on the side, some have nixie
sockets, others simply divide by ten and provide outputs but don't
have displays in themselves.
Tim.