That ubiquitous "-Tron"

[Paul_RK]

I'm sure many of us have spent a while listening to Mellotrons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mellotron

[TonyDuell]

There's always the non-electronc 'matron' and 'patron'

Keeping on-topic, I've not seen the counter tubes 'dekatron' and 'trochotron' mentioned yet.

Along with 'cyclotron' you can also have 'synchrotron' as a particle accelerator.

'Trinitron'? Or are trade names exluded?

[G6Tanuki]

Surprised that nobody has mentioned the Bulova Accutron, the first electronic wristwatch which used a transistor circuit to energize a tiny tuning fork.

If you held one to your ear you could hear it humming.

[dglcomp]

And related to the Mellotron you have the Orchestron (optical disk based), Birotron (funded by Wakeman and based on 8 track catridges) and the later name for Mellotron, Novatron

[G6Tanuki]

As well as the Dynatron oscillator there was also the Transitron oscillator that was used as the timebase in some TVs and oscilloscopes.

Then there was the Kalitron oscillator using a pair of cross coupled triodes that was popular as a stable VFO or local oscillator at VHF, it had the advantage that it intrinsically produced two anti phase outputs so was brilliant for driving a push pull triode as mixer or frequency multiplier.

[Philips210]

I was going to mention Cyclotron resonance but Dave W beat me to it.

There was also the BBC's energetic trade test card music tape, Positron, which aired from 1985 to 1987.

Magnetron was also used as a trade mark on some older Briggs and Stratton lawn mower engines in relation to the ignition system.

Regards,
Symon

[ms660]

TRON Trace on (BASIC)

Fetron.

Amongst others.

Lawrence.

[Studio263]

Its not all bad, the Sony Trinitron picture tube name comes from:

Trinity - union of three

Electron - the working medium of the tube

The Trinitron was a development of the Chromatron which was sold in Japan but not exported. It was a single gun tube which used beam indexing, the aperture grille wires of the Trinitron (the bit which replaces the shadowmask in a conventional colour tube) were originally used to sense the beam position and to multiplex the gun.

It didn't really work, the Trinitron was a hasty redesign to recover something from the project. Especially in its early forms it is **nearly** a single gun colour tube.

[jhalphen]

Hi to all,
Hi Studio263,

Want to know more about the Chromatron's story ?
see here Marshall W's site (USA) :
https://visions4netjournal.com/422-2/

and of course the Sony Trinitron, scroll way down long page :
https://visions4netjournal.com/page-five-trinitron/

Sorry! for intruding into the "Tron" only topic,

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

[G6Tanuki]

Also related to the Trinitron, when Sony's patents on it ran out, Mitsubishi came out with their Diamondtron tubes as used in their Black Diamond sets.

Another 'tron' was the Calutron used for the first mass production of enriched Uranium. The name derived from where it was originally developed, CALifornia University.

(there's an interesting story about how the engineers working on the Calutron needed to get very high magnetic field strength but the copper windings of the electromagnets kept overheating with the current. Someone remembered the low resistivity of Silver which meant they could get the high current without overheating. The US treasury were prevailed upon to loan many tons of their silver reserve to produce the electromagnets!!)

[dave walsh]

Paul Sherwin mentioned "tron" in electronics [possibly from the 30's] at p14*. I found one definition that included electron but linked it to Latin! The usage of
this term was well spotted by the OP in the first place. The "weighing beam" [Trongate] meaning seems to extend to "Speak Your Weight" machines, taking us back to the Greek "Instrument" [p19*].

Dave W

[kalee20]

The dekatron has always seemed a bit odd... from diode, triode, etc we go to octode, enneode (or nonode), then... dekatron

Following on from G6Tanuki's transitron timebase, there was the phantastron.

A friend of mine devised an LC oscillator circuit which she called an Amīcatron!

[Phil__G]

...then there was that cubicle shaped machine in Woody Allen's "Sleeper" that they took turns to experience...

I was always fascinated by Dekatrons. A counter without any counting ciircuitry!
A fully functional digital clock made with only a pulse generator and four Dekatron tubes. Pure magic!

[Paul_RK]

And now Discatron rises to the surface of the muddy swirl that is my mind: Birmingham-based manufacturer of slot-loading portable players for 7" records, with or without LW/MW radio (the DiscaSet, not to be confused with the slightly later Bush Discassette) and, in the TriCombo model, with a cartridge deck too.

Paul

[McMurdo]

Betatron

[Malcolm G6ANZ]

You beat me to it Kevin. I missed working on a Betatron by a few months. It was removed and replaced with a 25Mv linear accelerator.

[Jez1234]

There is a UK manufacturer of hi fi amplifiers simply called "Tron"

[Radio Wrangler]

Sanatron (yet another oscillator)
Bevatron (yet another accelerator)

David

[McMurdo]

If you wanted bakelite knobs off the shelf, at one time you contacted Radiatron Components.

[McMurdo]

Not vintage but one of the popular inverter (solar/off grid) manufacturers is 'Victron'. They also make industrial UPS's.

There's a range of german-made industrial battery chargers called 'Belatron'.

There's a TV production company that makes mainly comedy panel shows for BBC and C4 called 'Zeppotron'.