In message CABXq0ZCZLhBjpZwt+JTXTgR+xGPraO9x9ewKWXs+JAYe2h87Sw@mail.gmail.com
, "Donald E. Pauly" writes:

http://www.thermoelectrics.caltech.edu/thermoelectrics/history.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistance_thermometer#History

--
Poul-Henning Kamp      | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.

Hi

A bit of “who knew what when” as far as crystal cuts:

1931:

http://www.worldcat.org/title/quartz-resonators-and-oscillators/oclc/11299952 http://www.worldcat.org/title/quartz-resonators-and-oscillators/oclc/11299952

1946:

https://www.amazon.com/Piezoelectricity-Introduction-Applications-Electromechanical-Phenomena/dp/B000OJWIJS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1496534218&sr=1-1&keywords=Piezoelectricity

1956:

http://www.tubebooks.org/Books/hpc.pdf http://www.tubebooks.org/Books/hpc.pdf

The only one I could find online is the last one, sorry about that !! It’s also a fun read if you happen to be into 1950’s radio technology.

Bob

On 6/3/17 2:38 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:

I'm not sure about fancy coolers.. Yeah, people showed that the effect
worked, but I think they really didn't come into their own until the
modern ones that are omnipresent in 12V powered beer coolers and the
like were developed.  That was 70s according to the article.
Borg Warner (of clutch, brake, and gearbox fame) apparently had one in
1960.
http://www.thermoelectric.com/2010/archives/library/Ads%20in%20the%2060's.PDF

So they existed, but were pretty exotic. would a crystal oscillator
builder have wanted to fool with one?  Hey, there have been people
tinkering with almost everything forever.

Yep... and thermocouples have been used for thermometry for a long time
too. Thermistors, for that matter, nonlinear as all get-out, but readily
available.

In the 50s, a transistor oscillator would have been pretty unusual.
I'm not sure they could work at a high enough frequency.  You'll note
that the early "transistor radios" were basically TRF designs for the AM
band, and the transistor basically provided audio gain, not RF gain.

http://www.junkbox.com/electronics/sheets/GE_2N107_Datasheet.jpg

I guess the regen receiver must have had some gain at 1 MHz. I found an
old GE datasheet that gives the ft of 0.6 MHz. (and the hfe wasn't bad,
20, at DC, probably)

But you sure weren't building a 5MHz or 10 MHz oscillator with a 2N107
or a CK722.  Or the 2N170 NPN, which I am surprised to find you can
still buy (and cheaper, in constant dollars, than originally).

Hi

The objective of the early work with coolers and OCXO’s was DOD sponsored. Low cost was
not the goal :) The idea was that aging might be much better at the lower turn than at the upper turn. Once they
played around a bit they found that activation energy was a real thing in this case. The improvement in aging
did not justify the significant increase in complexity of the design. The idea has popped up about every ten
years. Each time the conclusion after building a trial unit is pretty much the same.

Bob

On 6/3/17 5:54 PM, Bob kb8tq wrote:

I'm just picturing in my mind a 14 inch high rack mount unit with
several hundred watts in heater power for the vacuum tube amplifiers,
etc. needed to implement this kind of thing in the early 50s.

I'll bet someone also built one with mechanical refrigeration, a liquid
cooling loop, and an electronic heater.  That one was a full rack
cabinet<grin>

The "idea popping up every 10 years" is not restricted to crystal
oscillators.  Anything where there's a "the technology doesn't support
it" is the barrier. A couple generations and all of a sudden you can do
it.  And sometimes it works - DDS and PN codes are examples of things
which were barely feasible some decades ago, so people went through all
sorts of gyrations to achieve goals with out it, but now, it's "oh yeah,
sure, a parallel correlator to acquire and track 32 simultaneous GPS
signals, isn't there an Arduino Sketch for that?"