Surplus Sales of Nebraska has 25,000 pcs of this valuable little peanut tube on hand. According to online dialogue on these small thyratrons, they were initially developed for controlling incandescent lamps, electromechanical relays or solenoids, for bidirectional counters, to perform various functions in Dekatron calculators, for voltage threshold detectors in RC timers, etc.

Another use of the thyratron was in relaxation oscillators. Since the plate turn-on voltage is much higher than the turn-off voltage, the tube exhibits hysteresis and, with a capacitor across it, it can function as a sawtooth oscillator. The voltage on the grid controls the breakdown voltage and thus the period of oscillation. Thyratron relaxation oscillators were used in power inverters and oscilloscope sweep circuits.

One miniature thyratron, the triode 6D4, found an additional use as a potent noise source. When operated as a diode (grid tied to cathode) in a transverse magnetic field.potent noise source. Sufficiently filtered for "flatness" (white noise) in a band of interest, such noise was used for testing radio receivers.

Most interesting to us was the early experimentation operating like a vacuum tube triode, below it's ignition voltage, allowing it to amplify analog signals as a self quenching super regen detector in radio receivers in the 1950's.

We welcome development on this little pencil tube. Please send us any legitimate circuits and we will post on our website.