If you’re interested in reading about state of the art radio engineering data from way back in the day, then this may be for you.Tubebooks.org has a free download of Federal Telephone and Radio Corporation’s 1946 “Radio Data for Engineers, Second Edition” waiting for you. The 335 page PDF has loads of conversion factors, math, charts and diagrams which would have been indispensable to geeks in the pre-computer, vacuum tube era.
Serves to show just how far things have come, and how fortunate today’s tech hobbyist is.
Thank you for the info! I love the vintage radios.
If you really want to see how far things have progressed in electronics, check out
“Radiotron Designer’s Handbook, Fourth Edition”
(the same site). I haven’t checked
to see if they scanned the whole thing since I have a dead-tree copy. It’s electronics from the era when Zap! meant you got hit with some high voltage, not that you blew an IC from ESD. After reading this, you’ll be glad your mosfets don’t have filaments.
I still use a lot of that technology being a HAM. In those days, when you “let the smoke out”, you really let it out!!
Something satisfying watching a tube warm up, knowing the the plate has +500V on it.
Tubes are still very much alive and in use in the high power RF industry (think radar, military, avionics, microwave transmissions, microwave ovens, x-rays, medical etc.) and aren’t going away any time soon.
Solid state cannot yet produce the kind of power at as high of frequencies that a tube can and it will be years before they even come close. I respect 500V all day long, but try 22,000 volts on the low end… 180kV CW isn’t unheard of either with tube outputs into the megawatts. But in everyday life, you are right, hardcore hams see tubes all the time. But i’m not talking stanard glass “valves” that most people think of when they think tubes. Google “klystron”, “Crossed Field Amplifier”, or “Traveling Wave Tube” for a taste of what I mean.
I remember my days in radar. And the main frequency of the system was right in the middle of a ham band at 1.25 giggle hertz, at a megawatt. Talk about a klystron!! Air & oil cooled. Not too bad for a system designed before the Vietnam era. And portable. (On the backs of a pair of duece & halfs)
I would love to have the portable dish system we used, be perfect for some very low power work. I used to get return signals way down in the grass at -107db, and track them. Fun tymes.
I still have my grandfather’s Heathkit tube tester from the early ’40’s, with updates until about 1972.