Way back in the salad days of digital computing (the 1940s and '50s), computers were made of vacuum tubes -- big, hot, clunky devices that, when you got right down to it, were essentially glorified ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Peer inside an antique radio and you’ll find what look like small light bulbs. They’re actually vacuum tubes — the predecessors of the silicon transistor. Vacuum tubes went the way of the dinosaurs in ...

Consider the plight of a mid-career or even freshly minted electrical engineer in 1960. He or she was perched precariously between two worlds – the proven, practical, and well-supported world of ...

PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Before there was the transistor, there was the tube. Lots of them. Televisions, radios — if it was electronic, it had a tube in it. Then, in the 1950s and 60s, transistors ...

IN THE AGE OFwireless speakers and Bluetooth streaming, vacuum-tube amplifiers may seem antiquated, but you don’t have to be an audio nerd to appreciate their appeal. Designed to power traditional ...