The tester itself is relatively ... a pair of known transistors, and not much else. When everything is hooked together, the NPN/PNP pair causes the LED to light up, but the circuit is broken ...

For example, you can insert a resistor, a capacitor, an inductor, a diode, or a transistor and get a readout of which pin is which. It seems like magic, but [Andreas Spiess] did the research on ...

Many people giving talks had complained about the current germanium transistors -- they had a bad habit of not working at high temperatures. Silicon, since it's right above germanium on the ...