Crossword clues for oscilloscope
The Collaborative International Dictionary
oscilloscope \os*cil"lo*scope\, n. [L. oscillare to swing + -scope.] An electronic measuring instrument which provides a visual representation of the time variation of electrical quantities, such as voltage or current. It may be used to measure the shape of a voltage pulse or the frequency of an oscillating voltage. It can also be used to measure properties of other physical variables, such as sound or light intensity, if they can be translated into electrical voltage or current.
Note: The common cathode-ray oscilloscope uses a cathode-ray tube to project a beam of electrons onto the interior of a nearly flat surface surface of the tube, which is coated with a material which fluoresces when struck by the moving electrons. The location of the beam of electrons on the target surface is controlled by electrodes surrounding the point of origin of the beam, which control the horizontal and vertical deflection. The degree of deflection from the vertical center can be made to represent the electrical variable to be measured. The cathode-ray oscilloscope is similar in many respects to the most common form of television tube. -- os*cil"lo*scop`ic, a.
Syn: scope, cathode-ray oscilloscope, CRO
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
"instrument for visually recording an electrical wave," 1915, a hybrid formed from Latin oscillare "to swing" (see oscillation) + -scope.
Wiktionary
n. An electronic measuring instrument that creates a visible two-dimensional graph, on a screen, of one or more continuously varying voltages or currents.
WordNet
n. electronic equipment that provides visual images of varying electrical quantities [syn: scope, cathode-ray oscilloscope, CRO]
Wikipedia
An oscilloscope, previously called an oscillograph, and informally known as a scope, CRO (for cathode-ray oscilloscope), or DSO (for the more modern digital storage oscilloscope), is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of constantly varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. Other signals (such as sound or vibration) can be converted to voltages and displayed.
Oscilloscopes are used to observe the change of an electrical signal over time, such that voltage and time describe a shape which is continuously graphed against a calibrated scale. The observed waveform can be analyzed for such properties as amplitude, frequency, rise time, time interval, distortion and others. Modern digital instruments may calculate and display these properties directly. Originally, calculation of these values required manually measuring the waveform against the scales built into the screen of the instrument.
The oscilloscope can be adjusted so that repetitive signals can be observed as a continuous shape on the screen. A storage oscilloscope allows single events to be captured by the instrument and displayed for a relatively long time, allowing observation of events too fast to be directly perceptible.
Oscilloscopes are used in the sciences, medicine, engineering, automotive and the telecommunications industry. General-purpose instruments are used for maintenance of electronic equipment and laboratory work. Special-purpose oscilloscopes may be used for such purposes as analyzing an automotive ignition system or to display the waveform of the heartbeat as an electrocardiogram.
Before the advent of digital electronics, oscilloscopes used cathode ray tubes (CRTs) as their display element (hence were commonly referred to as CROs) and linear amplifiers for signal processing. Storage oscilloscopes used special storage CRTs to maintain a steady display of a single brief signal. CROs were later largely superseded by digital storage oscilloscopes (DSOs) with thin panel displays, fast analog-to-digital converters and digital signal processors. DSOs without integrated displays (sometimes known as digitisers) are available at lower cost and use a general-purpose digital computer to process and display waveforms.
Oscilloscope is an independent film company founded by Adam Yauch and former THINKFilm executive and A24 founder David Fenkel. It also has a recording studio and film production facilities. Fenkel returned to the company on May 4, 2012 following Yauch's death. As of August 2012 Fenkel has left the company, which is now headed by Dan Berger.
Usage examples of "oscilloscope".
Taking control, Dex began to flip a series of buttons, causing a jagged signal to appear on another oscilloscope display.
Several banks of telescreens and oscilloscopes flanked the instrument panel.
One lead hooked him into the plethysmograph and the Lissajous oscilloscope and the GSR galvanometer.
Multi-tracks and oscilloscopes and VCRs and huge 3-mil thick Mylar foam speakers that looked like the rear seats of a 1933 Chevy.
Several banks of telescreens and oscilloscopes flanked the instrument panel.
No odors, no fluids, just images on TV monitors, tracings on oscilloscopes, graphics on their Calyx workstations, and the occasional disembodied sound effect coming out of a speaker.
She had to remind herself that Crius had sounded like that, too: flat, emotionless, without human inflection, like a voice constructed on an oscilloscope screen.
The walls were covered with diagnostics racks, oscilloscopes, computers, TV monitors, like props from an old TV show.
The oscilloscope built into Anglesey's machine gave him the other man's exact alpha rhythm, his basic biological clock.
On the face of a cathode-ray oscilloscope now in his field of view, a wiggly green trace diagrammed pulses which he was sure showed exactly how scared he was.
John Gigg, the graduate student who had replaced Roger Mason amid the welter of cables and oscilloscopes - now jazzed up with some rather more sophisticated computing gear, which took much of the steam out of interpreting the data - was set to map the time course of the 'bursting' on the neurons in IMHV, and look at the LPO as well.
I once witnessed an experiment in which the head of a green bottle fly was connected by a very thin wire to an oscilloscope that displayed, in a kind of graph, any electrical impulses produced by the fly's olfactory system.
Late into the night the three of them worked, making little marks on printouts of the oscilloscope and recording them on yellow legal pads.
And get down some oscilloscopes and a standard-scale vibration-measuring device with extra short-pulse equipment on it.
A maze of temporary wiring ran to Dr Hughes’s equipment — multibeam oscilloscopes, megawattmeters and microchronometers and the special relays that had been constructed to make the circuit at the calculated instant.