To vary the current flowing from the A or storage battery through the filament so that it will be heated to the right degree you adjust the rheostat while you are listening in to the signals or other sounds. By carefully adjusting the rheostat you can easily find the point at which it makes the tube the most sensitive. A rheostat is also useful in that it keeps the filament from burning out when the current from the battery first flows through it. You can very often increase the sensitiveness of a vacuum tube after you have used it for a while by recharging the A or storage battery.
The degree to which a vacuum tube has been exhausted has a very pronounced effect on its sensitivity. The longer the tube is used the lower its vacuum gets and generally the less sensitive it becomes. When this takes place (and you can only guess at it) you can very often make it more sensitive by warming it over the flame of a candle. Vacuum tubes having a gas content (in which case they are, of course, no longer vacuum tubes in the strict sense) make better detectors than tubes from which the air has been exhausted and which are sealed off in this evacuated condition because their sensitiveness is not dependent on the degree of vacuum as in the latter tubes. Moreover, a tube that is completely exhausted costs more than one that is filled with gas.
[CHAPTER IX]
VACUUM TUBE AMPLIFIER RECEIVING SETS
The reason a vacuum tube detector is more sensitive than a crystal detector is because while the latter merely rectifies the oscillating current that surges in the receiving circuits, the former acts as an amplifier at the same time. The vacuum tube can be used as a separate amplifier in connection with either: (1) a crystal detector or (2) a vacuum tube detector, and (a) it will amplify either the radio frequency currents, that is the high frequency oscillating currents which are set up in the oscillation circuits or (b) it will amplify the audio frequency currents, that is, the low frequency alternating currents that flow through the head phone circuit.
To use the amplified radio frequency oscillating currents or amplified audio frequency alternating currents that are set up by an amplifier tube either a high resistance, called a grid leak, or an amplifying transformer, with or without an iron core, must be connected with the plate circuit of the first amplifier tube and the grid circuit of the next amplifier tube or detector tube, or with the wire point of a crystal detector. Where two or more amplifier tubes are coupled together in this way the scheme is known as cascade amplification.
Where either a radio frequency transformer, that is one without the iron core, or an audio frequency transformer, that is one with the iron core, is used to couple the amplifier tube circuits together better results are obtained than where a high resistance grid leak is used, but the amplifying tubes have to be more carefully shielded from each other or they will react and set up a howling noise in the head phones. On the other hand grid leaks cost less but they are more troublesome to use as you have to find out for yourself the exact resistance value they must have and this you can do only by testing them out.
A Grid Leak Amplifier Receiving Set. With Crystal Detector.--The apparatus you need for this set includes: (1) a loose coupled tuning coil, (2) a variable condenser, (3) two fixed condensers, (4) a crystal detector, or better a vacuum tube detector, (5) an A or 6 volt storage battery, (6) a rheostat, (7) a B or 22-1/2 volt dry cell battery, (8) a fixed resistance unit, or leak grid as it is called, and (9) a pair of head-phones. The tuning coil, variable condenser, fixed condensers, crystal detectors and head-phones are exactly the same as those described in Set No. 2 in [Chapter III]. The A and B batteries are exactly the same as those described in [Chapter VIII]. The vacuum tube amplifier and the grid leak are the only new pieces of apparatus you need and not described before.
The Vacuum Tube Amplifier.--This consists of a three electrode vacuum tube exactly like the vacuum tube detector described in [Chapter VIII] and pictured in Fig. 38, except that instead of being filled with a non-combustible gas it is evacuated, that is, the air has been completely pumped out of it. The gas filled tube, however, can be used as an amplifier and either kind of tube can be used for either radio frequency or audio frequency amplification, though with the exhausted tube it is easier to obtain the right plate and filament voltages for good working.
The Fixed Resistance Unit, or Grid Leak.--Grid leaks are made in different ways but all of them have an enormously high resistance. One way of making them consists of depositing a thin film of gold on a sheet of mica and placing another sheet of mica on top to protect it the whole being enclosed in a glass tube as shown at A in Fig. 42. These grid leaks are made in units of from 50,000 ohms (.05 megohm) to 5,000,000 ohms (5 megohms) and cost from $1 to $2.