Rochester Avionic Archives

Wheatstone Bridge

Wheatstone Bridge - Photo 1
Catalogue NumberC0241
Sub-categories
Year of manufactureCirca 1950
LocationRack RAA07 [Main Store]
Object TypeTest Equipment
DivisionUnknown
Platform
Manufacturer
Part No?
Serial No?
Dimensions
Width (mm):318
Height (mm):200
Depth (mm):215
Weight (g):645
Inscription(s)Portable Wheatstone Bridge
NotesThis high quality instrument has a nice solid wooden case and robust controls and was manufactured by the Croydon Precision Instrument company, known as Cropico, in the 1950’s. The PW1 is a manually balanced Wheatstone bridge with a usable range from 10 milliohms to 11 megohms. Four decades of switched resistances provide four-digit resolution (from 1 milliohm on the 10 ohm range to 1kohm on the 10 megohm range. Separate multiply by and divide by switches, each spanning four decades from 10 to 10,000 act to modify the scaling of the switched resistances. There is no internal power supply: a battery of at least 2V would have been connected to the Battery terminals.

A Wheatstone bridge is an electrical circuit used to measure an unknown electrical resistance by balancing two legs of a bridge circuit, one leg of which includes the unknown component. The primary benefit of a wheatstone bridge is its ability to provide extremely accurate measurements (in contrast with something like a simple voltage divider). It was invented by Samuel Hunter Christie in 1833 and improved and popularized by Sir Charles Wheatstone in 1843.

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Our collection exceeds 1900 pieces of equipment from HUDs to Air Data Computers, and we also have a substantial archive of Brochures, Company Newspapers, Films, Videos and Photographs.

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