| 释义 |
converter|kənˈvɜːtə(r)|
Also erron. -tor.
[f. convert v. + -er1.]
1. One who converts (another) to any faith, opinion, or party; one who makes converts.
1570–6Lambarde Peramb. Kent (1826) 2 The messengers of Pope Gregorye (that were converters of the people). 1652Sparke Prim. Devot. (1663) 510 He became a converter of the gentiles. 1726Cavallier Mem. i. 3 These unmerciful Converters began with ravaging and destroying all that the Protestants had in their Houses. 1838Pusey (title) The Church the Converter of the Heathen.
2. a. One who converts or changes one thing into another; one who turns a thing to another purpose or to his own use.
1533Tindale Supper of Lord Wks. III. 261 Let our covetous converters chop and change bread and wine, till we there feel, see, and taste neither bread nor wine. 1687N. Johnston Assur. Abbey Lands 26 A converter of Ecclesiastical Mony to his own use. 1825New Monthly Mag. XIII. 510 Modern converters of field-sports into butcheries.
b. spec. (a) One whose business it is to ‘convert’ rough timber: see convert v. 12 b; (b) one whose business it is to convert iron into steel; (c) ‘In the cotton-goods trade, one who takes unbleached gray cloth and converts it into the finished product’ (Funk's Standard Dict., 1928).
1811Naval Chron. XXV. 88 One of the timber-convertors of the dock-yard. 1875Ure Dict. Arts III. 898 Réaumur..first [brought] the process of conversion to any degree of perfection..The first principles laid down by him are now the guide of the converter. 1881Mechanic §198 Buyers and converters of all kinds of English timber. 1959Listener 5 Nov. 768/1 Is the horizontal structure a weakness with yarn spinners selling to cloth manufacturers and manufacturers selling to converters who deal with separate finishers to complete the cloth for final use?
3. a. An apparatus for converting one thing into another.
1889Nature 24 Oct. 631 A vessel, called a converter..whose use is to permit the water to resolve itself into steam.
b. Steel Manuf. A large vessel or retort, made of iron and lined with some refractory material (usually a kind of siliceous stone call ganister), in which molten pig-iron is converted into steel by the Bessemer and other processes: see Bessemer. Also, a retort used for Bessemerizing copper ores.
1867Morn. Star 20 Sept. 7 The converters can thus be worked with liquid iron direct from the blast furnaces, the iron remaining perfectly liquid during the short time of transit. 1883Harper's Mag. Aug. 334/2 The Bessemer [process]..decarbonizes melted iron in huge converters by forcing an air stream through it. 1897Daily News 4 Jan. 2/1, 18,300 ounces of gold, contained in either converter bars, cast and refined copper, or bullion. 1906Westm. Gaz. 22 Aug. 9/1 The works, which consist of three blast furnaces and two converters, are capable of treating 10,000 tons of ore per month. 1958Everyman's Encycl. III. 754/2 Converter, iron retort used in the Bessemer process of making steel, and for obtaining metal from matter (metal sulphides).
c. Electr. An apparatus for converting high-tension into low-tension electricity. Also, a device for changing current of one kind into current of another kind; = transformer 2 a.
1888[see transformer 2 a]. 1889Pall Mall G. 25 Jan. 6/1 The mains are underground, and..the current generated is of high tension. At each house lighted, the current is changed into low tension by means of converters. 1890C. W. Vincent in 19th Cent. Jan. 147 In electric lighting, induction coils of converse construction are employed, the primary coil being of fine wire, and the secondary or induction coil of the thicker wire. These coils convert high-tension into low-tension electricity, and under the name of ‘converters’ are already in use in several electric lighting systems. 1906Goodchild & Tweney Technol. & Sci. Dict. 783/1 Another class of transformers are more often termed converters or rotary converters; they are used in the transformation of alternate currents to continuous currents (or vice versâ), or for changing the voltage of continuous currents. 1911Encycl. Brit. XVIII. 912/2 The converter cannot advantageously be used to control the power factor by variation of the field strength. Ibid., The synchronous converter finds its chief use in electric traction. 1958Spectator 1 Aug. 167/2 The car radio, which does not need a converter and runs direct from the car battery.
d. A cipher machine. U.S.
1942U.S. War Dept. Techn. Man. 11–380 (title) Converter M-209. 1959C. Ogburn Marauders (1960) v. 167 A libel upon our faithful M-209 converter by the radio operators, whose transmissions were far more likely to be to blame for unintelligible messages than the little cipher machine.
e. Computers. (See quot. 19621.)
1950Tompkins & Wakelin High-Speed Computing Devices xv. 386 An analog-to-digital converter is a device which accepts instantaneous values of continuously variable quantities and expresses them in discrete numerical form. Ibid. 393 A digital-to-analog converter employed in the Bell Telephone Laboratories p.c.m. system makes use of the exponential decay characteristics of the RC circuit. 1951M. L. Kuder (title) Anodige, an electronic analogue-to-digital converter (Report 1117, Nat. Bureau of Standards (U.S.)). 1962Gloss. Terms Automatic Data Proc. (B.S.I.) 83 Converter, a unit which changes the representation of data from one form to another so as to make it available or acceptable to another machine, e.g. a unit which changes data punched on cards to data recorded on magnetic tape. A converter may also edit the data. 1962M. G. Hartley Electronic Analogue Computers vii. 143 Appropriate analogue-to-digital converters provide the digital equivalent of the various voltages in the analogue machine.
f. Nuclear Technology. A nuclear reactor in which fertile material is converted into fissile material. In full converter reactor.
1953Rep. U.S.A.E.C. on Nucl. Power Reactor Technol. 80 If the reactor is operating as a converter, the U235 remaining in the core must be decontaminated. 1956S. Glasstone Princ. Nucl. Reactor Engin. i. 39 In these reactors the neutrons accompanying the fission process are used to convert..non-fissionable material (uranium-238) into one (plutonium-239) that is fissionable... Such reactors have been called production reactors or converters. 1962Gloss. Nuclear Sci. (B.S.I.) 80 Breeder and converter reactors may also be power reactors. |