IGNITRON

CD 2478057 E&MP12.036

Electric Appliances & Apparatus

no date

The "Ignitron" mercury tube, which is expected to revolutionize present methods of conversion and control of electrical energy, is shown here with Dr. Joseph Slepian who with Leon R. Ludwig, both Westinghouse research engineers, discovered the new principle.

After 25 years of research, they found that an ordinary pencil lead, scarcely ever out of their hands, was capable of controlling by means of a tiny current, electric arc currents one million times greater.

Dr. Slepian is famed as discoverer of the "de-ion" principle of snuffing electric arcs, said to be the only basic improvement in interrupting electric circuits made in the past quarter century. 

Original Caption by Science Service
^©Westinghouse