1958 · Thermoelectric Generator · Work 836 of 1,871
A log hut in the Siberian taiga on a winter evening, from a rough ceiling beam three chains holding a flat ring of densely set upright fins of matt grey-blue sheet metal about thirty centimetres across with a slender silvery tube rising from its centre, below it on chains a burning kerosene lamp with a glass chimney and a round copper-brown fuel tank casting warm light, a brown cloth-covered cable running in loose loops to a wooden valve radio with a cloth front on a wall shelf, a man in a quilted jacket and felt boots seen from behind turning a knob of the radio, frost patterns on the window pane, darkness beyond.
What it was used for
The ТГК-3 thermoelectric generator hung above a "Molniya" type kerosene lamp suspended on chains beneath its metal cylinder, and turned the waste heat of the lamp chimney into current for battery radios - in villages with no mains, while the lamp went on lighting the room. Two thermopiles gave about 2 V at up to 0.5 A for the valve heaters and, through a vibrator converter, about 120 V at up to 8 mA for the anodes; a stabiliser held the voltage. It powered sets such as the "Rodina-47", "Rodina-52", "Iskra", "Tallin B-2" and "Tula". Consumption was 60 to 70 g of kerosene per hour, and one filling of the lamp lasted 8 hours of listening.
What was new
What marked it out was not the thermopile - the Seebeck effect had been known since the 19th century - but its use as a household power source: a generator needing nothing beyond the lamp that is burning anyway, and therefore costing no extra fuel. Output was about 3 W: enough for a valve radio. The price was efficiency - 60 to 70 g of kerosene an hour yielded a few watts. When small villages were abandoned in the 1960s and 1970s and their people moved to places with mains power, by the Krasnoyarsk museum's account only geologists and hunters still used it.
What the sources leave open: Voltages, currents, consumption, radio models and the later users from the Krasnoyarsk regional museum, which dates its example to 1958 and the "imeni Engelsa" works. The output figure comes from the second museum text, which gives 3 W and, elsewhere, says output never exceeded 5 W. Neither source gives production figures or price; the second text dates the start of production only to the 1950s.