Wire Spark Chambers

The current status of wire spark chamber devices and techniques is reviewed. Wire-sparkplanes have been used as hodoscopes, as spark chambers and as decision-making devices. Chambers in use have wire spacings of about 1 mm, up to 360 wires and comparable spatial resolution. Time resolution is less than 1 ¿sec; efficiencies approach 100%; recovery times are a few hundred microseconds. Substantially larger chambers can be built. The most common method of readout is by means of ferrite memory cores. Electrical and acoustic delay lines have also been used as well as pulse current division and auxiliary discharges. Several techniques are suitable for prompt logical operations such as: whether there are 0, 1 or more sparks in a plane; approximate spark location as an analogue signal.