A device, commonly used in counting circuits, that produces an output pulse whenever a designated number of input pulses have been received. The scaling factor is the number of input pulses per output pulse. Scaling factors of 10 or 2 are most commonly used: a decade scaler has a factor of 10 and a binary scaler has a factor of 2. The latter usually consists of a flip-flop or trigger circuit. Scaler circuits are most commonly used with radiation counters and in computers.