A High-Speed Transient Analyzer

A proposed new instrument is designed to give an instantaneous display of the nature of transient and nonrecurring signals. Both the amplitude and the frequency of the signal are plotted on a storage oscilloscope with a time lag of only one cycle. Frequency is obtained from a digital measurement of the period of a cycle. During each cycle, the reciprocal of the previous period is taken, converting the measurement to frequency. Amplitude is displayed as the positive peak value reached during the cycle previous to the moment of plotting. Examples of the display illustrate speech characteristics and the attack sounds of several musical instruments.