TO-3 at Motorola around 1955. The lead spacing was originally intended to allow plugging the device into a then-common tube socket. The metal package can be attached to a heat sink, making it suitable for devices dissipating several watts of heat. Thermal compound is used to improve heat transfer between the device case and the heat sink. Since the device case is one of the electrical connections, an insulator may be required to electrically isolate the component from the heatsink. Insulating washers may be made of mica or other materials with good thermal conductivity. The case is used with high-power and
Electrical reactance Electrical reactance In electrical and electronic systems, reactance is the opposition of a circuit element to a "change" in current or voltage, due to that element's inductance or capacitance. The notion of reactance is similar to electrical resistance, but it differs in several respects. In phasor analysis, reactance is used to compute amplitude and phase changes of sinusoidal alternating current going through a circuit element. It is denoted by the symbol formula_1. An ideal resistor has zero reactance, whereas ideal inductors and capacitors have zero resistance – that is, respond to current only by reactance. The magnitude of the reactance