Electronic equipment

Hundreds of electronic equipments are now available to science and various industries help to do jobs better or more economically or to take over jobs that could not be done otherwise.

The application, use, and proper maintenance of the many electronic types of equipment now in industrial use demand certain knowledge to be of the fundamentals of various standard electronic equipments.

We already know that in motors, incandescent lamps, transformers, etc., the electricity always flows in the copper wire or other metal parts. But consider lightning, where electricity seems to jump through space. The great electric pressure of lightning forces the electric current to pass through the air. In the same way, inside any radio tube, tiny electric currents are made to pass through the space separating certain parts in the tube. Such action — where electricity appeal's to flow through space instead to being confined to metal conductors or circuits — is said to be electronic.

Why is it called electronic? Years ago, scientists who were trying to explain how electricity passed through space, imagined such an electric current to be a steady stream of tiny electrical particles. They called these particles electrons. Today, any electric current is believed to consist of countless number of electrons. Only when electricity passed through space, when the stream of electrons comes out of the metal into the open, is such action said to be electronic. A device is called electronic; electricity must flow across the space inside the device and be controlled by that device.

In ordinary air, electrons can be made be jump through space only by pressure of high voltage. But if it enclosed in a tube from which the air has been removed, the electrons flow across the space more easily. All tubes must be carefully sealed for the desired conditions to be maintained inside the tube. Most of the small tubes are vacuum tubes, the large ones usually containing mercury or other vapour.

Some electric lights are electronic. The common incandescent light bulb is not considered as electronic though it is enclosed like a radio tube, for the electric current flows entirely within the metal filament. In contrast, the fluorescent lamp is electronic, its light is produced by the action of electric current flowing through the space between the two ends of the lamp.

Electronics as a science is not new, for radio, sound picture fluorescent light, etc. are known to depend upon electronics.