The triode vacuum tube might be nearly obsolete today, but it was a technology critical to making radio practical over 100 years ago. [Kathy] has put together a video that tells the story and explains ...

And now a page from our "Sunday Morning" Almanac: November 16th, 1904, 110 years ago today . . . the birthday of an invention heard 'round the world. For that was the day the British inventor John ...

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 ...

It all began with a cheap Chinese rotary vane vacuum pump and a desire to learn the witchcraft of DIY vacuum tubes. It ended with a string of successes – a working vacuum chamber, light bulbs, glow ...

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 ...

Talking about vacuum tubes—or “vacuum electron devices” (VEDs), as their proponents prefer to call them—may seem like you are discussing ancient history. After all, who even considers VEDs when ...

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 ...

Linear, small-signal AC models can be useful in the analysis and design of vacuum-tube-based circuits. Under large-signal conditions, nonlinear models are typically required. Almost 120 years ago, ...