What Is It?

[tsbrownie]

Hint: It's old, USN and probably cost a lot.

WARNING: These operate on high voltage. This is NOT an instructional video, it is for entertainment only. If you do not have training in high voltage, get it or don't work with these!

[mklotz]

When I was in college I had a summer job at Bell Laboratories. My boss was a researcher who wanted to evaluate alternate emitter geometries in power transistors to increase their current capacity. He tasked me to build an apparatus to display the infrared recombination radiation from the chip.

I used a tube like yours but mine was taken from a WWII infrared sniperscope and was slightly bigger. With the transistor on the stage of a metallurgical microscope, the infrared light was focused on the sniperscope lens and the resulting visual image captured on high-speed film in a Polaroid camera back. The whole contraption was mounted inside a light proof box.

The procedure worked well and led to new emitter geometries that were incorporated into the transistors used (then) in Western Electric telephone switching networks.

[tsbrownie]

Wow, Bell Labs. My friends and I dreamed of jobs there, but only 1 of us was smart enough to make it (and sadly it was not me). Sounds like an interesting project. It's amazing how far transistors have come in my lifetime. Now there are similar devices that can handle before unimaginable power.