Editing Rectifier (section)

==== {{anchor|Vibrator}}Vibrating rectifier ====
{{Main|Mechanical rectifier}}
[[File:Vibrator rectifier battery charger.jpg|thumb|A [[vibrator (electronic)|vibrator]] battery charger from 1922.  It produced 6 A DC at 6 V to charge automobile batteries.]]
These consisted of a resonant [[reed switch|reed]], vibrated by an alternating magnetic field created by an AC [[electromagnet]], with contacts that reversed the direction of the current on the negative half cycles. They were used in low power devices, such as [[battery charger]]s, to rectify the low voltage produced by a step-down transformer. Another use was in battery power supplies for portable vacuum tube radios, to provide the high DC voltage for the tubes.  These operated as a mechanical version of modern solid state switching [[inverter]]s, with a transformer to step the battery voltage up, and a set of vibrator contacts on the transformer core, operated by its [[magnetic field]], to repeatedly break the DC battery current to create a pulsing AC to power the transformer. Then a second set of [[mechanical rectifier|rectifier contacts]] on the [[vibrator (electronic)|vibrator]] rectified the high AC voltage from the transformer secondary to DC.
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