[time-nuts] Anyone heard of a Rubidium Standard called a Varian X-4700A?

paul swed paulswedb at gmail.com
Mon Aug 12 18:55:56 EDT 2013


Jerry would love to see some pictures. Quite likely it will work. Way back
when they used to put a fair amount of RB in so pretty good chances. Sure
you could have various issues like how they ignite the bulb. But those
aren't really that bad to deal with usually.
Regards
Paul
WB8TSL


On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 6:47 PM, <gchafee at twcny.rr.com> wrote:

> Hi all,
> A number of years ago when I lived in Denver, I knew George Kamas of whom
> worked in the (then NBS) Time and frequency Labs. He was able to purchase a
> lot of the equipment that they disposed of and I wound up with one piece
> that I only had running for a short time. It is a Varian X-4700A serial #4.
>
> I was told by George (and I have no way to know I f this was true) , that
> this unit was modified by NBS from the original Varian dividers and such,
> and was at one time used as the actual unit to steer the transmitters at
> WWVB as they has the cesium bank to get the actual frequency and time, but
> they wanted they best they could get for short term stability to drive the
> transmitter frequency for comparison purposes. This would have been steered
> by the bank of cesium clocks and synced to USNO I am sure, but this unit
> runs on 24VDC, is a monster as far as size, and I am not sure if it still
> works, but it did at one time when I fired it up.
>
> I have pictures if anyone would like to see what I am talking about.
>
> I suspect that Varian will have nothing to do with any questions asked,
> and NIST will have tossed any records regarding such equipment, but has
> anyone else any info that can shed some light on this beast?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jerry
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