Regeneration theory

Regeneration or feed-back is of considerable importance in many applications of vacuum tubes. The most obvious example is that of vacuum tube oscillators, where the feed-back is carried beyond the singing point. Another application is the 21-circuit test of balance, in which the current due to the unbalance between two impedances is fed back, the gain being increased until singing occurs. Still other applications are cases where portions of the output current of amplifiers are fed back to the input either unintentionally or by design. For the purpose of investigating the stability of such devices they may be looked on as amplifiers whose output is connected to the input through a transducer. This paper deals with the theory of stability of such systems.