the high price of Wollaston wire

[eub]

These folks sell Wollaston wire, platinum in nickel. One-micron wire costs $1556 per meter, or $458 per 10 cm. We're not even going to talk about the 0.6-micron wire.

Comments

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Wollaston wire is an obsolete name for very fine (less than .01 mm thick) platinum wire clad in silver used for electrical instruments around the turn of the 19th century.

What do you DO with it?

[eub.livejournal.com]

You make thermophones. I'm not totally sure what a thermophone is.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/1398687.html

Then from www.thefreedictionary/com/thermophone :

"Ther´mo`phone
n. 1. A portable form of telethermometer, using a telephone in connection with a differential thermometer.
2. A telephone involving heat effects, as changes in temperature (hence in length) due to pulsations of the line current in a fine wire connected with the receiver diaphragm."

I don't really get what that means though. A telephone like something that communicates sound? Not necessarily a telephone to talk over? It's some kind of weirdo musical instrument?

[hattifattener]

That'd be a teeny tiny thermocouple. or something. Yeah, what do you want it for?

[eub.livejournal.com]

I would just pet it very, very gently.

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Maybe he wants to prepare a long talk about a cool idea he had with it, documenting how the idea didn't actually work or anything?

Come to think of it, that's kind of what *I* do at work (and essentially what my thesis project was like in grad school), no wonder I had such a problem with those kinds of talks at dorkbot.