The Collaborative International Dictionary
Interrupter \In`ter*rupt"er\, n.
One who, or that which, interrupts.
(Elec.) A device for opening and closing an electrical circuit; a vibrating spring or tuning fork, arranged to make and break a circuit at rapidly recurring intervals, by the action of the current itself. [Also spelled interruptor.]
Wiktionary
n. 1 One who or that which interrupts. 2 A device for opening and closing an electrical circuit.
WordNet
n. a device for automatically interrupting an electric current
Wikipedia
An interrupter in electrical engineering is a device used to interrupt the flow of a steady direct current for the purpose of converting a steady electric field into a changing one. Frequently, the interrupter is used in conjunction with a coil to produce increased voltages either by a back emf effect or through transformer action in an induction coil.
Usage examples of "interrupter".
At every turn, their headlights picked out bewildering collections of every spare part imaginable: crated interrupters, gravitron compensators, wave shunts, dynamos, telsa coils, amplifiers, generators, multipliers, Drive oscillators, resonance waveguides, Deighton modulators, the billion and one items necessary to maintain a sizable fleet aloft and in fighting trim.
This is why, of course, the Network’s ships trapped in q-space—that otherwhere of superpositions and spindrift possibilities—wield waveform interrupters, and why, though I was Rachel’s friend, I killed her across several timelines.