OLD HIGH TECHNOLOGY To many hearing the name thermoionic tube may evoke something of futuristic, while hearing the name vacuum tube or just tube will certainly evoke something vintage, probably recalling an old radio seen in a museum or in a flea market. Yep, the two synonyms actually reflect an unexpected side of this old, high, technology. Many think that old technologies should be simple to put in practice nowadays, but this is not true. Do-it-yourselfers often are able to build in their garage-lab many things that in the past were only possible in real (big) laboratories, but DIYer that make vacuum tubes are very rare. Despite all we are accoustomed to flat touch screens, computers that may fit in a pocket, and other technological wonders, and tubes resemble just old lamps, making thermoionic tubes is all but a simple task, even today. And some tubes still today have no equivalent replacement, so they are actually still in use, even though buried into not so common machines, such as the X-ray projector used by your dentist. Think, within that tube you need to create vacuum with just really few molecules of air, a technology possible with staged pumps, and particularly thanks to the diffusion pump, invented in 1915. And this is just one of the challanges you would have to face to make a vacuum tube. So, I think we should pay more respect when looking at those old ladies of high technology. And yes, as our ancestors were able to create such a complex things in 1920, that still today you would not be able to reproduce in your garage-lab, as you should not underestimate what they were able to do in greatly specialized labs, such as the one used for the Apollo mission in 1969.
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 18:42:57 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015