Digital Readout Circuits for Wire Spark Chambers

The wires of wire spark chambers or hodoscope planes are individually threaded through magnetic memory cores, which are "set" by the spark currents. Only a small fraction of the wires are struck by the sparks of one event, so that it is practical to generate addresses for those cores which have been "set." Circuits are described which scan the cores sequentially, 32 at a time, generating addresses and transmitting them to a buffer store or to a computer. A certain minimum time, in our case determined by the transit time of signals in cables, is required to scan the cores. A small additional time is required to generate and store each address. Any number of sparks may be handled in one event, and checking features have been incorporated in the system.