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Re: Test equipment



Original poster: "by way of Terry Fritz <twftesla-at-qwest-dot-net>" <Mddeming-at-aol-dot-com>

In a message dated 12/15/02 3:29:51 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
tesla-at-pupman-dot-com writes:


>Ken -
>
>Ummm .... I respectfully disagree, although it may be a manner of semantics.
>I deal with a lot of different test equipment, and have yet to see any
>instrument that the manufacturer actually called an "audio signal generator"
>that had an upper frequency limit that extended very far beyond the limit of
>detection by the human ear (around 20 kHz).


I have an HP 200cd "Wide-Range Oscillator"  with a 5Hz to 600KHz range, 
which I got in "almost new" condition ca. 1962, IIRC. It was, by function, 
an audio oscillator for the first 30 years of its existence. At that time, 
an audio oscillator was defined as any oscillator which was capable of 
output in the "audio-frequency" range. An RF Oscillator was any oscillator 
which had a minimum frequency above the "audio range". Also the difference 
between an Oscillator and a Signal Generator was mainly that a "Signal 
Generator" was capable of different waveforms (sine, square, sawtooth, 
triangle, etc.), while an "Oscillator" produced only sine waves.
        Most of this is semantics, just like the definition of "ordinary 
resistor". It seems that the Over-50 crowd and the Under-40 crowd are, to 
paraphrase G.B.Shaw, "two people separated by a common language".

Matt D.