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Registered Member #2099
Joined: Wed Apr 29 2009, 12:22AM
Location: Los Altos, California
Posts: 1716
Anders M. wrote ... I can confirm that there are shunt resistors inside the russian units. There is a voltage divider hooked up to the 12V input, and the mercury tube is connected, in series with two (!) resistors, from the midpoint to the negative terminal.
Any ideas on if it would be a good idea to speed these up by running a higher current through the tube?
Thanks again, Anders. Would you care to read or measure the R values for us? Be careful with ohmeter on the mercury tube itself, which I guess to be a few 100 or 1000 ohms. Have never tried to open my one meter of the Russian type (from kwtubes).
I'm hoping to do some experiments with progressively higher currents. Here's a contemporary datasheet link: Specified max current for model 120CP3 is 50 uA (about 16 x nominal value).
Just ordered 5 more of the 120CP3 meters for about half the listed price at Stated to be NOS but sold "as-is"; when they arrive I'll report if their gaps are OK.
[edit] re. invention -- the modern implementation seems to be rooted in US patent 3045178 by Lester Corrsin in 1962. The patent discusses, among other things,
Registered Member #33
Joined: Sat Feb 04 2006, 01:31PM
Location: Norway
Posts: 971
The top resistor in the divider is 200k, the bottom one is 5k36. The mercury tube is connected from the midpoint to minus, in series with two seriesed resistors, one is 2k7, and the other one is 100k. Hope this helps.
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Mercury Hourmeter
