ELECTROANALYTICAL CHEMISTRY AND INTERFACIAL ELECTROCHEMISTRY 123 Elsevier Sequoia S.A., Lausanne - Printed in The Netherlands

B O O K REVIEWS

Electronic Electrochemical Measuring Instruments, by D. DoBos, Akademiai Kiado, Publishing House of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, 1966, 449 pages, $14.7o.

This book falls into two roughly equal parts. The first is an introduction to electronic components, circuits, and applications to electrochemical measurements. The second describes some commercially-available instruments. The scope of the book illustrates by default the rapid progress of the applications of electronics to electrochemistry as well as of electronics itself. Thus, potentiostats are mentioned twice but not discussed; operational amplifiers are not mentioned; only classical polarography is discussed; field effect transistors are said to be still in development.

In Chapter I there is a clear, elementary description of the elements of elec- tlonic circuits, while the following chapter describes the basic circuits for amplifi- cation, oscillation, etc. In Chapter 3 these are applied to electrochemicalmeasurements, mostly in general terms, although practical circuits are given for a vacuum tube and a transistorized voltameter for potentiometric titration, a conductance meter, a dielectric constant meter and a number of high-frequency titrator circuits. The first half of the book concludes with two short chapters on handling electronic instru- ments and on simple calculations; e.g., calculation of cathode bias resistor.

Chapter 6, which takes up the second half of the book, is a partial trade catalogue of commercially-available instruments, each with a photograph, many with operating instructions, and a few with component lists and circuit diagrams. The principle of selection is not clear. Fifty-odd pH-meters from nine countries are included as well as automatic titrators, conductometers, oscillometric titratols, dielectrometers, and polarographs. The only East European instruments are those from Hungary. I t is particularly surprising that polarographs from Czechoslovakia and the U.S.S.R. are not described. Most of the instruments are from Western Europe although a few from the United States are included. While this section of the book might be of use in selecting a suitable instrument to buy, it is not clear that anything has been added to the manufacturers' specifications which are readily obtained by a prospective purchaser and are kept up-to-date. The aim of this section of the book would have been more effectively served by a more comprehensive list of manufacturers with addresses and simply the names of the instruments made by each.

The English translation is excellent and the production of the book equally good.

ROGER PARSONS, California Institute of Technology

J. Electroanal. Chem., 16 (1968) 123