Old School Meter

[Eidetic]

I recently came across an old laser energy meter and just got around to cleaning it up. It's a TRG Model 113 energy meter with a Model 107 "ballistic thermopile" detector. Because of an old ad I found, I thought it was made in 1967. When I opened it up however, I found it stamped September, 1965, making it the oldest laser meter I have. The next oldest is a 1967 Perkin Elmer Model 5000.


Here's a pic showing the face of the detector. There are brass cones inside each aperture, about three inches deep.


And here's a pic showing inside the meter.


TRG was the defense contract company that Gordon Gould worked for in the late '50s when he first described his laser concepts. I'm really happy to have something from them in my collection. I know the whereabouts of an old ruby laser head from them, but it's been heavily modified and I don't know how much of the original unit remains. I'll snag it one of these days!

[laser_freak]

I have the same thermopile / "detector" somewhere in this pile of stuff I call a desk.

[Eidetic]

Excellent! Hope it's not being used as a pencil cup!

Did you notice the upper scale on the meter?

[krazer]

I also have a 107 thermopile from them, I have wanted to build an amp for it to use with a normal thermopile meter for measuring my big pulsed lasers, but haven't got around to it.

If you have the manual (or schematics for the matter) it would really be an interesting read

I wonder if that head can actually handle kJ pulses, it certainly would need to cool a while between them! Internally it is made out of a ton of thermocouple junctions in series (and an identical grouping of them in antiseries on the ref port), quite an interesting design.

[flecom]

wow look at those GE metal can transistors!! really cool