Did they exist? Did anyone use them? Who knows? I certainly have no idea. But it's a cool topic...
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The ad may be somewhat misleading, but if you read it carefully, the tube is not meant to tell time and it's not meant to be reset, it says clearly "operating-time indicator" i.e. it shows how many hours a certain machine has been in use. Lifetime indicator for a machine, similar to the odometer in a car. So, the process is not meant to be reversible. There are many applications for such a device.
It is electrolysis, but just taking place very, very slowly. The electrolytic cell is fed a constant current from a DC supply with a suitable series resistor, the current being chosen such that after some number of hours, the solution has lost its colour altogether. It would be used in some expensive piece of machinery to show when maintenance was required; replacing it almost certainly would not be the most expensive part of the work.
A current of 1A flowing for one hour corresponds to a certain fixed number of electrons (= 0.0373113708 moles' worth). And one Cu++ ion takes two electrons from the negative electrode to plate out onto its surface as an atom of copper. So you just need to make sure there are the right number of Cu++ ions present to begin with. By the time they have all been discharged, the solution will be clear. Knowing how many grams of CuSO4 you started with in each litre of water, the molecular weight of the salt and the amount of solution in the tube, you can calculate how much charge will be required to discharge and plate out all the copper ions in the tube, thus leaving a clear solution.
The positive electrode must also be producing oxygen and twice as much sulphur trioxide, of course, as two SO4– ions each donate two electrons to it, leaving O2 and 2SO3; but probably not enough to build up a dangerous pressure.
Fran, seeing the CK number on the Raytheon item reminds me of Raytheon’s CK-722, the first widely available PNP transistor from the 1950’s. I built some projects with them.
i havent heard of those but seen mercury based 'hour meters' in the form of small tubular fuse packages … dunno if still available……
I have seen them. The idea was to replace a synchronous motor based time counter with something much smaller. The purpose was to provide warranty or “service required” indicator. When serviced, the simple 2-pin ampule was simply replaced. It operated on DC (while the clockwork required AC — of known frequency). The calibration of course was simply adjusted with a series resistor. Coulomb’s law…
I have never seen a Raytheon device but I have seen devices produced by a company called Bisset and Berman. Their product was called a Coulometer. They were used as timers in fuse assemblies. Once the device armed, the coulometer could be used to change operating modes or, after a longer period of time, neutralize the device. Most probably by exploding it.
It’s just an indicator. It might have been conceptually inexpensive to produce compared to another type of tracking device Ike hour meters.
Remember those green dot lead acid batteries? It’s like that. Sorta. Not really.
I had one! Not sure where it went (I may still have it). I bought it on canal street sometime in the 1960's. It was a tube in a piece of plastic with tic marks. It was intended to track service hours for a piece of equipment. Definitely worked by some kind of electroplating. If I remember right, it would take 1000 hours for it to reach full scale. I was told then that it was used on photo copiers. All this information came from one of the many characters in that neighborhood. Some of those guys went back to the early days of radio where the RF was modulated by Carbon microphones. So they had these weird looking lips from RF burns. I tried it out and it moved so slowly, adolescent me got bored waiting for something to evolve.
I think a name for that sort of thing was "solion integrator"
I have seen a thing like it as an "engine hours" switch. It had 3 legs not 2. Two of the legs would become connected when the time was exhausted.
I've seen "thousands of hour meters" in old studio vidicon cameras, the ones I've seen looked like a hybrid of a mercury thermometer and a 3AG fuse. I'm not certain why it was important to clock the cams, but I wonder if this was a predecessor?
I could not find the YouTube video that featured a teardown including a similar device, I thought it was on DiodeGoneWild or Msylvain59, but in any event, there was (or is) a soviet hour meter using a horizontal glass tube that was essentially a mercury thermometer with a mercury salt dissolved in water in it. As current flows through the tube, more and more liquid mercury would accumulate at one end resulting in a reading proportional to the Coulombs and reading out in hours. I did find an Ebay listing for the display in "New NOS RARE Soviet Time counter Electrochemical ЭСВ-2,5-12,6-1 / ESV-2,5-12,6-1" (It may have been you not really entirely certain)
Hope this concept doesn't come back in a modern time. Buy a cell phone. It has a "tube" that has a limit lifespan and then you have to buy a new cell phone as the "tube has expired".