About a decade ago I started a strange little journey in my free time that cut a path across electronics manufacturing from over the last century. One morning I decided to find out how the little ...

A vacuum tube, known as the first electronic device, is used to switch, amplify, or commutate electric signals. In the past, vacuum tubes functioned as a main part of a diverse range of electronic ...

In today's world, vacuum tubes or radio valves seem as dead as high button shoes and buggy whips, but DARPA sees them as very much the technology of the future. As part of a new program, the agency is ...

Before transistors or microchips, the earliest computers relied on vacuum tubes — glass bulbs that glowed like small light bulbs and acted as electronic switches. Each tube could represent a one or ...

The transistor is one of the most profound innovations in all of human existence. First discovered in 1947, it has scaled like no advance in human history; we can pack billions of transistors into ...

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Vacuum tubes could be returning, but it may be difficult to see them--no glass bulbs with glowing ...

The transistor revolutionized the world and made the abundant computing we now rely on a possibility, but before the transistor, there was the vacuum tube. Large, hot, power hungry, and prone to ...

In the 1800s, when pneumatic tubes shot telegrams and small items all around buildings and sometimes small cities, the future of mass transit seemed clear: we'd be firing people around through these ...

There is disquiet in the world of vacuum electronics, that something as simple as shipping a vacuum tube could now be very difficult to achieve. It’s a concern expressed among other places in a video ...