Radio Shack Bargain Parts

[CHoaglin at aol.com]

In a message dated 3/19/00 6:11:41 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
efm3 at mediaone.net writes:

<< 
 > I was in Radio Shlack today and came across (and impulsively bought)
 > a pack of 5 cadmium sulphide photocell devices.  They were marked as
 > "photocells".
 
 I've got a bunch of parts gathered together for when I get some spare time 
to build the therman. For the CdS cells, I managed to get some really nice 
ones from a friend. They're really old, with date codes from the 60's, but 
they're WAY nicer looking than the radio shack ones. They're metal cans about 
an inch across, with a huge cell inside, covered by a quartz window. My 
friend had a bunch of them, so I sorted through them to find a couple pairs 
of cells with similar resistive characteristics. The cells were used in 
street lights, to turn them off and on..(mental picture of synth-diy'ers 
climbing streetlight poles to get parts)

If I remember correctly, the therman uses a square wave oscillator made from 
a hex inverter..Is there a nicer oscillator which could be substituted, and 
is also simple to build?

Chris