Design of function generators

THE ANALOG-COMPUTER field is frequently concerned with the generation of periodic nonsinusoidal functions of time. At the present time, this waveform generation is frequently performed with biased diode networks, curve followers, and synchronous switches. The main purpose of this article is to give the theoretical design and analysis of nonsinusoidal function generators which utilize delay-type or short-time memory devices and certain nonlinear elements in their structure. The paper is meant to be exploratory, in a theoretical sense only, of a sizable number of different methods of waveform generation which utilize these circuit elements.