  Intrinsic localized modes, also called discrete breathers, can exist under
certain conditions in one-dimensional nonlinear electrical lattices driven by
external harmonic excitations. In this work, we have studied experimentally the
efectiveness of generic periodic excitations of variable waveform at generating
discrete breathers in such lattices. We have found that this generation
phenomenon is optimally controlled by the impulse transmitted by the external
excitation (time integral over two consecutive zeros
