A Very-High-Speed Analog Buffer with Analog-to-Digital Converter

An analog signal with a bandwidth up to 100 MHz is temporarily stored in a relatively inexpensive analog buffer consisting of an oscilloscope screen image on the target layer of a vidicon tube. From this buffer 255 samples are taken, digitized (seven bits sample), and transferred to a digital computer or averager with a rate of 15 000 samples/s. The fastest fill time of the analog buffer is 50 ns, so the minimum time between consecutive samples of the analog input signal corresponds to 2 χ 10-10 s. A modified apparatus could be used to digitize on paper or film recorded curves, etc.