[time-nuts] So what’s inside that Cs Beam Tube anyway?

Tom Van Baak tvb at LeapSecond.com
Mon Oct 31 18:44:41 EDT 2016


More eye candy for the cesium nuts -- the center of a cesium beam tube is the large copper Ramsey microwave cavity. Each generation of cesium standard uses a different design. The 5 specimens seen here came from Corby Dawson, who's probably hacked open more Cs tubes than all of us put together.

http://www.leapsecond.com/pages/cspeak/cesium-tube-ramsey-cavity-collection.jpg

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So, Skip, if you have the time, break open another dead tube and keep removing layers until you expose the copper cavity itself. 

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The first commercial cesium standard was the Atomichron, made by the National Company in the late 50's. It's 10x larger than a 5061A. Some photos here, including visible parts of the monster beam tube:

http://www.leapsecond.com/museum/nc2001/
http://www.ieee-uffc.org/main/history-atomichron.asp

/tvb
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