Is it is possible today to design and make automatic devices for industrial and power engineering uses without microcircuits and microprocessors, without complex power supplies for them? “Yes!” asserts the author of the book, Dr. Vladimir Gurevich, and as proof of this assertion provides descriptions of tens of original automatic devices based on modern discrete components: high-voltage transistors and thyristors, miniature vacuum and high power gas filed reed switches, and combinations of them. Such devices turn out to be much more simple and, in many cases, more reliable than the traditional devices made today. To make the material more accessible to a broad spectrum of readers, the author begins the book with an explanation of the working principles of semi-conductor devices of various types and, further, through the description of elementary functional modules, passes on to complete automatic devices. The book finishes with extensive reference material on modern high-voltage bipolar, FET and IGBT transistors, thyristors and triacs, reed switches, especially selected by the author.

THE BOOK CAN BE USED AS

• Textbook for studying principles and construction of automatic devices on discrete components;
  
• Source of ideas and solutions for the development or modernization of electronic switches, generators, timers, logic elements, regulators and voltage stabilizers, relay protection against overloads or emergency modes;
  
• A complete set of descriptions of the original devices ready-for-use;
  
• Handbook of modern discrete elements of automatics.