Glow modulation tubes

[engels]

I'm looking for info on glow modulation tubes. I could not find anything - no datasheets, no circuits' examples, nothing.
I'm particulary interested in R1131C but any other info on the subject is welcome.

What I'm planning to do with it? I'm making an electroacoustic installation which produces abstract sounds by itself. The sound source is a string with a pickup, then the signal goes into a couple of FXs and then ino an amplifier with a speaker. There's a LDR-controlled feedback loop over the FX and also there's an acoustic feedback from the speakers back to the strings. It oscilates and feeds back and makes all kinds of weird sounds. Here's an example of the music it makes (it's from my previous one, the installation I'm making at the moment is still not functioning) -

http://www.meatexz.com/zone/mp3/ZONE-memorymotion.mp3
http://www.meatexz.com/zone/mp3/ZONE-trucks.mp3

now the glow modulation tubes may control the FX feedback loop with light flashes, which is also spectacular and certainly adds to the show.

I've been digging internet for a while to find something about my R1131C. No datasheets, no pinouts. The only thing I've found is this:

The original text is here -
http://www.jgp.org/cgi/reprint/76/5/517.pdf

here's the part about the tube -

The glow tube was activated by a fixed voltage (300V) and could be turned on in 50us. When a flash was required, a pulse (300V, 1ms) was applied to the glow tube. When a steady light was reqired, pulses of 300V and 0.5ms were applied. This was achieved by a voltage-to-frequency converter. The voltage was set at a value that gave a pulse frequency of 500 per second. The stimulus intensity could be modulated by varying the voltage input to the voltage-to-frequency converter, modulating the frequency of the pulses sent to the glow tube. This technique of pulse modulation was used by Dodge et al. (1968) and Knight et al. (1970). For the experiments described here, frequencies of modulation from 0.1 to 20 Hz were achieved. The amplitude of modulation was +-40% of the steady state. Steady light intensity was controlled by neutral density filters. The unattenuated light intensity at the cornea was 7.5 X 10^14 photons/cm2-s when measured at 520 nm over a 100-nm bandwidth. The turning on and turning off and the modulation of the steady light were under computer control.

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could someone give me some advise how to run this tube, what power supply to make and how to figure out the pinout?

here's a picture of the tube -


thanks in advance!!!!

[Geek]

Hiya again Engels,

I'm suprised info is so rare

Let's give this thread a bump

[engels]

Let's say, it makes it interesting. I usually tend to find the most obscure tubes and make something with them - rather then building another 18W.
But not even having the pinout of the tube.... duh, that's too much!

still thanks for support!

maybe some other expert will stumble upon this thread... hello, is there anybody out there?

[engels]

The pinout is currently what I'm trying to decode.
The base is octal and there's 8 pins. not two. No special marking next to the pins.
The glass is black and there's no chance to see what's inside (only a small round window at the top - where the ray is supposed to come from).

Any suggestions how to find out what's the pinout???

[martinab2]

This page might be what you are looking for

[Geek]

In retrospect Engels, maybe the answer was there - that one we reviewed uses only pins 2 and 7. Maybe yours does too, only physically has the others to help physically strengthen it?

[engels]

The tube on the link above seem to be a bit "weaker" than my R1131C - it's running on 150V@30mA while mine has approximately 300V@45mA. I'm sure most of the pins are for mechanical support only, but do you think it's possible that glow mod tube might have more than two active pins????

[Geek]

I can't really answer that accurately, but if I were to "throw a dart" at the guessboard, I'd say no.

[engels]

found at

http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=000...3E2.0.CO%3B2-S

[engels]

It's rather long but very nice. Also there are some funny astronaut pictures by the end.

http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/ca...1967022152.pdf