The 60 Hz inverter shown below is about as simple to make and as inexpensive as one could desire. Yes, it is capable of providing some very useful services. Operating from an automobile battery, it can supply 50 W for the operation of such devices as an ac-dc radio, electric shaver, fluorescent lamp, small soldering iron, 40 W incandescent lamp, recorder, or portable phonograph. Its essential ingredients are a filament transformer and two general-purpose germanium power transistors. Although this is a saturable-core oscillator, no separate feedback windings are employed. Rather, feedback is produced by cross-coupled connections in the manner of a multivibrator. At a full load, the efficiency is in the vicinity of 75 percent, and the output voltage is about 106 V. The "mild" pi-section filter despikes the output waveform and causes a trapezoid wave, rather than the usual square wave, to be available at the output. This makes the device more suitable for the operation of radios...