At 11:32 PM -0500 on 1/10/01, Mark Lincoln wrote:


>on 1/10/01 12:15 PM, Peter Bancroft at peter@... wrote:
>
>>  Maybe we could now, it being modern times, have a fractal onezero. A fuzzy
>  > balance, perfect. This actually was why schmitt triggers were invented.
>
>What's a Schmitt trigger?

It's a device designed to cleanup a square wave.

A square wave should look like this:


  ----------          ----------          ----------    <---- On
|          |        |          |        |          |
|          |        |          |        |          |
|          |        |          |        |          |
|          |        |          |        |          |
|          |        |          |        |          |
|          |________|          |________|          |   <-----Off

But could look like this:

    ----------          ----------          ----------    <---- On
   |          |        |          |        |          |
  |            |      |            |      |            |
  |            |      |            |      |            |
|              |    |              |    |              |
|              |    |              |    |              |
|              |____|              |____|              |   <-----Off


A Schmidt trigger will restore the waveform to the original.  Of 
course this is very simplified but you get the idea.