[A simple electronic delay line that facilitates the incomplete display of spontaneous bioelectric signals on an...

A simple electronic delay line is described which is appropriate to delay bioelectric events like action potentials of neurons up to 100 ms. Thus, the device allows to use untriggered potentials as trigger signals and thereafter to display the delayed events including possible prepotentials in toto on an oscilloscope. The delay line mainly consists on charge coupled devices (CCD) in which samples of potentials to be delayed are transported like in "bucket-chain". Thereby the delay time at a given number of CCD elements only depends on the frequency of a clock which drives the chain. As long as action potentials and other bioelectric events have to be delayed up to ca. 0,1 s this device may be used as an alternative to transient recorders or other apparatus which are far more expensive than the presented delay line.