complete process instrumentation
INSTRUMENTATION this general minimizer of highway accidents has not found widespread use. One gains a faint indication of what may be expected for the future of analytical instruments. Although we may be appalled by the necessity of learning so much new circuitry, the development is very timely. On the demonstrable theory that almost anything can be done electronically, the practical result is often forbidding. The electronics expert is never stumped by a problem, but his answer to one's request may well appear in the form of a 6-foot-high console with several hundred tubes. Blowers, for the ventilation of a multitube chassis, have become a standard component. One can all too easily fall in error with the assumption that ten vacuum tubes are at least ten times as unreliable as one, but the fact remains that ultimate limits do exist with respect to weight, cost, and waste energy (heat) dissipation. That barrier was reached long ago in electronic computers and interest in equivalent low-energy devices is perhaps greater in the computer field than in any other. Solar Battery
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The solar battery of the silicon type, developed by the Bell Laboratories, has now attained an efficiency of 11%. In keeping with its farsighted policies, the Bell System has already installed experimental frames on poles in Georgia for charging the storage batteries of rural telephone lines. The theoretical yield for a perfect photocell is roughly 1 kw. per square meter in bright sunlight; the actual yields, at present, are of the order of 100 watts for this area. Costs are still high and until these can be reduced, large scale power applications will not be feasible. The National Fabricated Products, Inc., Chicago, has been licensed by Western Electric to manufacture these cells. The advent of these devices (small cells) is of immediate interest to the research iuau because photoelectric techniques have unlimited applications in the laboratory. The advances in solid state physics, both theoretical and practical, have been so numerous that it is almost certain that simple devices will eventually supplant our present complex and cumbersome electronic equipment. The vacuum phototube with associated amplifiers, or the photomultiplier, which furnishes its own amplification by secondary emission, both represent elegant, long tune developments. It is becoming apparent that their days are numbered. The transistor, thermistor, phototransistor, and the newer silicon cells are eminently practical examples of what may be expected in the near future. ANALYTICAL
CHEMISTRY
