The Brits still call those, and transistors, valves.
I have one of those on a little wooden pedestal from an electronics supplier. Will never give it up. My kids did not believe the first computers had hundreds of them.
On the boats I worked on a lot of systems with tubes. STS1 SS 0427/GSSM.
Fire bottles! Love ’em.
Sold off about 3/4 of my tube collection. Just kept some spares that are common in older Philco and Zenith radios I still have.
Sad to part with them but someone else will carry on the tradition.
Same here. 6CG7’s, 12AU7’s, 3A3’s, etc.
Five #3 coffee cans full of ’em.
Ya just never know.
Oh, and I still have my 1955 RCA Receiving Tube manual, along with TWO 1933 Signal Corps portable tube testers!
Now, where did I put my signaling mirrors…
Cute, but minuscule compared to some of the tubes I’ve worked with in broadcast transmitters with outputs up to 38KW. Some of the ones for VHF TV made the FM tubes look small.
Yes, I do own several radios containing vacuum tubes more in the range of the ones pictured. Real radios glow in the dark.
Feral in highschool electronics class an Army former student brought in a radar tube. Little did I know in my main career I would be buying bigger ones.
They also make some pretty good space heaters. The 1955 RCA Color TV (WITH remote control!!) that my brother and I restored had 33 of ’em, just for the color TV portion. Add another 20+ for the remote control section, and you had a real bulky/heavy 355-watt heater!
Back in the day, when I was in the Navy, practically every type of comm equipment and radar used those. I did work on some gear that had early versions of what would later be termed integrated circuits.
After repairing one piece of equipment, we in the ET shop were curious about what was inside the small rectangular packages mounted in rows on the board, so we cut one open. Inside were transistors, resistors and capacitors arranged to perform logic functions.
Out at the transmitter station, there were two 40KW SSB transmitters with output tubes that were 4 feet tall. Only one of the transmitters was in operation at a time. The other was for backup, used during maintenance or if the primary failed during operation.
Did you ever work on the heavy-duty water-cooled HUGE bastards that put out 150KW? (ERP, of course!)
I got to go out on a service call with a Long Lines AT&T tower tech that had to replace the TWT, it was super-cooled and we had to wait 1-1/2 hours for it to warm up before we could go into/open up the enclosure to replace it! Don’t know or remember the power output on that one, darn it. All I remember is the frost on the tube once we got ready to replace it…
All totally obsolete now. Good riddance!
Some of the old B&W TV transmitters used water cooled tubes. Never got to see one myself, but worked with some engineers that had maintained them before they were replaced. One of those engineers had worked at Dumont.
Yep. Svetlana’s in my Fender Blues Junior…
TOOOOBS!!!!!
The Brits still call those, and transistors, valves.
I have one of those on a little wooden pedestal from an electronics supplier. Will never give it up. My kids did not believe the first computers had hundreds of them.
On the boats I worked on a lot of systems with tubes. STS1 SS 0427/GSSM.
Fire bottles! Love ’em.
Sold off about 3/4 of my tube collection. Just kept some spares that are common in older Philco and Zenith radios I still have.
Sad to part with them but someone else will carry on the tradition.
Same here. 6CG7’s, 12AU7’s, 3A3’s, etc.
Five #3 coffee cans full of ’em.
Ya just never know.
Oh, and I still have my 1955 RCA Receiving Tube manual, along with TWO 1933 Signal Corps portable tube testers!
Now, where did I put my signaling mirrors…
Cute, but minuscule compared to some of the tubes I’ve worked with in broadcast transmitters with outputs up to 38KW. Some of the ones for VHF TV made the FM tubes look small.
Yes, I do own several radios containing vacuum tubes more in the range of the ones pictured. Real radios glow in the dark.
Feral in highschool electronics class an Army former student brought in a radar tube. Little did I know in my main career I would be buying bigger ones.
They also make some pretty good space heaters. The 1955 RCA Color TV (WITH remote control!!) that my brother and I restored had 33 of ’em, just for the color TV portion. Add another 20+ for the remote control section, and you had a real bulky/heavy 355-watt heater!
Back in the day, when I was in the Navy, practically every type of comm equipment and radar used those. I did work on some gear that had early versions of what would later be termed integrated circuits.
After repairing one piece of equipment, we in the ET shop were curious about what was inside the small rectangular packages mounted in rows on the board, so we cut one open. Inside were transistors, resistors and capacitors arranged to perform logic functions.
Out at the transmitter station, there were two 40KW SSB transmitters with output tubes that were 4 feet tall. Only one of the transmitters was in operation at a time. The other was for backup, used during maintenance or if the primary failed during operation.
Did you ever work on the heavy-duty water-cooled HUGE bastards that put out 150KW? (ERP, of course!)
I got to go out on a service call with a Long Lines AT&T tower tech that had to replace the TWT, it was super-cooled and we had to wait 1-1/2 hours for it to warm up before we could go into/open up the enclosure to replace it! Don’t know or remember the power output on that one, darn it. All I remember is the frost on the tube once we got ready to replace it…
All totally obsolete now. Good riddance!
Some of the old B&W TV transmitters used water cooled tubes. Never got to see one myself, but worked with some engineers that had maintained them before they were replaced. One of those engineers had worked at Dumont.