A bifunctional pulse former.

The author built a small circuit board. It turns every messy button press into a clean 0.2-second pulse. Old relay boxes need this fix.

The gadget is cheap and snaps into any rat lever or pigeon key. No soldering needed.

The circuit gave the same pulse width every time. Response counts stopped drifting between sessions.

Standard pulses kept data sheets tidy. Researchers could trust their rate graphs again.

Dunham et al. (1969) lengthened metronome beats to 2 s and cut stuttering. Both papers show timing tweaks matter, one in speech, one in hardware.

Schmidt et al. (1969) shortened hopper time from 6 s to 2 s and sharpened pigeons’ peak shift. The 1973 note gives you the tool to lock in those short, exact durations.

Duncan et al. (1972) found response rates crash when food arrives more than 60 s after the peck. A steady 0.2 s pulse keeps your data clean so you can spot that drop.

If you run old electromechanical rigs, solder this board in. One fixed pulse ends double counts and missed inputs. Your graphs get cleaner overnight and you spend zero time debugging relay bounce.