[ARC5] Carbon cartridge replacement circuit

[Tom Lee]

Technically, you are certainly correct, of course, but common usage 
subsumes the implicit power source and other bits. It's too cumbersome 
to call a transistor a "device potentially capable of providing 
amplification, given certain conditions..." :)

And yes, indeed two-terminal devices can be amplifiers (again, with a 
power source and appropriate coupling structures). Tunnel diodes are one 
example, though probably less well-known today than a generation ago, 
perhaps. Even a germanium diode can be made to amplify, thanks to its 
thermal instability. I recall seeing a small handbook of diode circuits 
by Sylvania (or perhaps it was Raytheon), in which a 1N34 was used as an 
audio amplifier. It was very fussy, and often short-lived since it was 
operated at breakdown. Oleg Los(s)ev made point-contact amplifiers and 
oscillators with zincite in the 1920s. Nyle Stiner has more recently 
investigated other homemade negative-resistance diodes with great 
success. And of course there is the famous Gunn diode, etc.

--Cheers,
Tom

-- 
Prof. Thomas H. Lee
Allen Bldg., CIS-205
420 Via Palou Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4070
http://www-smirc.stanford.edu
650-725-3383 (public fax; no confidential information, please)

On 4/28/2017 10:54 PM, hwhall at compuserve.com wrote:
> >In general, two-lead devices cannot be considered as amplifiers.
>
> There's negative resistance devices... But I still think that it's 
> probably incorrect to label a single device (tube, diode, transistor) 
> as an amplifier because without other devices, potentials, etc., they 
> don't amplify at all.  YMMV
>
> Wayne
> WB4OGM
>
>
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