"whit3rd" wrote in message
...
On Wednesday, July 6, 2011 6:27:00 PM UTC-7, Arfa Daily wrote:

However, just because a design is 50 years old, and was 'elegant' in its
concept, that does not make it necessarily 'good', and by today's
standards,
a design that purports to be an extremely accurate timepiece, but which
runs
at an incorrect speed when the batteries are replaced, probably
legitimately
counts as being 'crap'.

Not really. The Accutron power supply was specifically a stable Hg cell,
and it isn't 'replace' that makes it run awry, it's 'substitute
nonstandard
supplies' that causes the issue. There's only so much compensation you
can do with a total semiconductor complement of one transistor.

But that's not what was being said. The actual point that I was commenting
on was where a reference was made to a note in the user guide regarding the
specific condition of it running fast when a new (correct type) battery was
fitted, until its terminal voltage fell to the main life voltage. It is this
undesirable characteristic that causes the problem, if you try to use
alternative chemistry cells that have a *permanently* higher terminal
voltage than the original.

Arfa