Electronics Poetry: "Power Supply" |
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Here are a few other electronics-themed poems: A Radioman's Nightmare, The Day Before Christmas, Sonnet of a Ham, Unpopular Electronics, Ode to a New Rig, Power Supply, More "Tower" to You, Requiem, Pre-Radio, What Is It?, Ravin Power Supply by Eileen V. Corridan
The how and why of a power supply Is something very quaint. It takes the a.c. current And makes it what it ain't.
You start with good ole a.c. But you need some pure d.c. How the PS finally makes it Is now quite clear to me.
First, gimme a primary winding; A secondary, too. Now I've got a transformer- Let's see what it will do.
The primary takes the line juice; Inductance does the rest. But you gotta split the secondary To do its job the best.
"Less turns in the coil for the heater, More turns for the plate supply." We've still got only a.c. Which the tube will rectify.
Now we come to the moment When tube and a.c. meet. Just keep in mind a rectifier Acts like a one-way street.
A.c. travels in wave form From plus to minus, and then It simply changes direction And does it over again.
But the tube says, "Nothing doing- This is no swinging door. I'll take one-half of your wavelengths, One-half - and nothing more!"
At least a half-wave rectifier Would act about that way. We'll use another plate in there And thus save wave and day.
So now one plate says, "Come ahead." It takes its half-waves through The other plate is minus, then; It has no job to do.
Then comes along the other half. The second plate starts working. So half and half are now a whole While number one plate's shirking.
From filament to filtering The current that is flowing Is now d.c. - pulsating kind - That toward the filter's going.
It isn't pure by any means. Its ripples need some smoothing. Chokes and condensers serve for this; The waves find these quite soothing.
The filter circuit works like this: In a condenser-input filter, Inductance and capacitance Keep pure d.c. in kilter.
Pulsating d.c. also has Some a.c. current flowing. Condensers short the a.c. out, And chokes keep d.c. going.
And so at last like Ivory Soap Our current's pure d.c. I must confess this whole darn thing Has made a wreck of me, see?
Posted February 6, 2020 |
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Ode on a Power Supply? Well, maybe
not really an ode, but this poem entitled, "Power Supply," written by Eileen V. Corridan,
appeared in the September 1942 edition of the ARRL's QST magazine. It is really quite entertaining and instructive! It applies
to the
original tube-based circuit as well as to modern solid state versions. I somehow
get the feeling that this poem will now be republished in many places.