Tektronix: The Cathode Ray Tube - Window to Electronics 

Such a fascinating video. I love how vintage technical content isn't afraid to provide a lot of incident technical details. These days, everything is so dumbed-down as to not bore or confuse a non-technical audience.

And this ladies and gentlemen, is why these guys managed to go to the moon. Excellence in design, continuous improvement in technology and thoroughness and pride in manufacturing. All this mostly with slide rules, electr mechanical calcs, Rolodexes, typewriters and a few chunky minicomputers.

This is hands-down mind-boggling. The amount of engineering and chemistry going into these things is stunning. I don't think my kitchen is up to the task.

New digital scopes are nice and I could not do my job without them. When I get behind the wheel of an old CRT scope, such as the 465, there that "ahhhhhh" confort feeling like putting on an old lost shoe (or something I can not describe). I still work on a few CRT based instruments of ours for customers. I get that "ahhhh" feeling when finally seeing a CRT again. I had no idea how complex and precise it was to make those CRTs. wow

I enjoyed working for Tektronix (Telequipment) in the UK, I was an engineer there from 1992 to 1998. Loved it.

Besides being fine instruments, these tubes are works of art. They will have to pull my analog CRT scope from my cold dead hands.

This should be scanned into glorious HD and restored frame by frame. Excellent film, flawless presentation. No obnoxious music, no quick cuts, no degenerate vocabulary used in narration. Thank you for sharing this.

The mindset of Tektronix engineers was that the CRT was not merely a display device, it was a precision instrument ITSELF, made for the detection and display of the signal of interest. The rationale for their advanced development of the CRT was to better display the signal and thus extract more information from it. It was a new mindset: Treat the CRT AS the measurement instrument. Not just a way to display what the rest of the circuit passed on to it.

All of that complexity and QC checking, standards, etc. It really shows as these CRTs still perform as they were new, 60+ years later.

I am very impressed how engineers and scientist figure all this out, and then build all the machines needed to produce large scale. And financial decisions to make all of this complex technology profitable too. Now I also better understand why these first oscilloscopes were so expensive. Very cool. We take a lot of stuff for granted, but it is quite fascinating all together.

Once you know how to do it, it's easy. Imagine the dedication, imagination and experimentation that was needed to figure it all out in the first place. It's mind boggling.

This is one of the best CRT technical videos on the Net. Thanks for sharing this. Learned a lot, once again, nice job!

I'm unsure of why all the hoo-haa over CRTs, but I'm happy to see Tektronics get publicity, as they always made superior scopes and you could count on their time and voltage calibrations. I'm used them from 1960.

The ingineers skills of this time absolutely blows my mind.

I think it is about the volume of manufacture. There is still something like this happening and I am glad being part of it. I am talking of dilution cryostats. Welding, brazing, sintering, electroplating. Done in-house in small batches. There must be other products too, but only small scale. The pressure gauges we use say "made in Lichtenstein" 😅

Based on the cars in the parking lot, I'm guessing this was made in the mid-1950s. Fascinating stuff!

Tektronix developed the art and science of the CRT to a level nobody else ever got close to touching. While they never made color TV tubes, if they had, we'd have had direct view HD TVs many years ago. Only Tektronix looked at the CRT as a performance limitation and not just as a display, and devoted massive amounts of time, money, and engineering to making the CRT a strength rather than a limitation in the equipment they made.

as diy electronic enthusiast first and electronic engineer after, I've always ammirated Tek products... with reason! A superior quality and technologies since their foundation!

Very good explanation, The CRTs are very complicated systems, and this video shows the basic ideas very simple and rather complete . Thank You.

Super cool. I always was afraid of TV sets as a kid. I loved electronics, but this is the first video that actually explained in detail, how it's constructed

Wow, a huge amount of engineering and work went in to producing a CRT. That technology has probably been lost today. I imagine most of the people in that video are long since retired and buried. Wonderfull video though. I really appreciate the technology of the past and I have worked with scopes with those round Tek tubes in them.

Great video and I appreciate that you are both preserving and presenting this material for us. Thanks~N4TYX~

Thanks a lot for publishing these videos sir ! These scopes are so much worth the money !

Amazing engineering and production methods. Wonderful to see.

Awesome presentation. Tektronix was and is the Cadillac of oscilloscopes.....

Very good info about crt manufacture and electronics teknology history. Thank You! Tektronix.

I'm always impressed with genius design of CRT, it was really a huge leap

Excellent series. Thanks for the hard work!! Mr Carlson's Lab recommended this and I can see why.

I recently purchased an older Tectronix Oscilloscope model 453 to get back into my love of electronics and it is great to find forums and videos about equipment I enjoy using and learning on.

Just what i was looking for! Thank you for uploading!

These tubes are what I learned electronics with, and still use today. I like how these scopes are little problem, and even the older ones are not too hard to work on. Tektronix made the better scopes, and I have even in the past used them as a room heater... The 535, 531, curve tracer, and 545. The TDS series is not as easy to work on though, as the parts are so much smaller, and I have a few of those as well.

Hello from Ukraine. Thanks, naice video.

06:06 - The wonderful 545B. I bought mine 50 years ago for £30, with the extra plug-in 4-channel amp. It still has it's little reel of silver repair solder on the bracket inside. I haven't used it for 40 years, but it has sentimental value!

oh, this was amazing. thank you for sharing. subscribed.

Mr. Carlson says subscribe, so I did.

I enjoy your Videos keep up the great work

The spiral resistance shown being deposited inside the large part of the glass envelope, was known as a GPA, or Gradient Potential Anode. It was connected to the final anode at the phosphor end, and the other end connected to next anode at the thinner end; which was connected via a well spaced pin on the tube base pins, so as to form a voltage gradient between them, giving a steady increasing voltage between the last two anodes, to give a gradual increase of accelerating voltage to the electrons towards the phosphor screen, to improve focus and acceleration of the electron beam while traveling in the wide part of the tube.

Fantastic and super interesting video congratulations. When I need to be rely sure of certain details in my developments, I don't trust that much the new digital oscilloscopes I always turn on the old analog one that can be trusted, No digital tricks. Thank you very much for the big detailed information you gave us.

Very enjoyable video.

First person to invent paper thin flat CRTs wins the internet.

Wow! I have a new respect for for my CRTs.

Imagine the complex engineering required to make the equipment required to make these CRT's. Then think back to how the inventor conceived the idea and had to provide a working model without any of the testing equipment, no auto welding machine or micrometer, everything done by hand, finding the right metals, fileing pieces of metal by hand on a work bench, 1 piece at a time. Even though this looks very complex, there's still a huge amount of machinery being used to speed up the process and keep costs down, eventually we'll make the machines to get rid of humans altogether, no need to have 1 person put a piece of metal into an auto welder, that can also be automated

I love that. Thanks for sharing...

I love the vintage cars in the car park!

Nice :) Soon I will upgrade my old oscilloscopes to a clock and do some osci music with CRT's. I just got some additional information.

beautiful

In college during the late 90 I was trained using CRT scopes but in the here and now I prefer my DSO

who else went on to ebay and bought a tube tek scope after watching this :)

why are they fired in a Hydrogen atmosphere ???? why not argon or co2 or something else ???? the complexity of these scopes is just mind boggling, it's no wonder these things cost more than a new car (back in the day) .. superb video's please keep finding these treasures and putting them up for us to get smarter !! thank you very much.

Amazing what was at one time produced in such a hands on way. Wonder what the pass/fail rate was for these or where in the steps were the highest for having troubles.

Great!

still got one of these oscilloscopes the 442 model and it works great.

Pretty much explains why the oscilloscopes where so expensive.

I was always marveled by those CRTs, but now seeing their tedious manufacturing process makes me appreciate them even more, although their digital cousins are way ahead of them in anyways. Any idea what decade this manufacturing footage was taken considering the looks of those cars in the parking lot?

Don't forget one of the first RAM devices was done on a cathode ray tube.

CRT display is still the best. I did not realize how labor intensive is the construction. No wonder TFT displays are easier to sell. The cost of building tubes would be exhorbitant. The old Red and Black Tek knobs are also of the highest quality and ergonomic function.

Era um cistema interessante! Rio de Janeiro Brasil

Wonderful video! Could you please let me know the year of the video? I knew Tektronix for the fantastic "Phaser" printers (I had a 750 to do fine work) but this video was really a surprise. It's really true that you never stop learning 😉👍. Thank you.

I l❤ve crt 😍

No wonder they were expensive. I would love to WW2 assembly as there are lots of NOS crts still around, 70 plus years of holding their little vacuums.

Craftmenship of days gone. later Tek bought tubes from Philips for their factory in Heerenveen Netherland that produced the 2200 serie (1979 - )

A miracle of technology. (100coment.😉)

😊IS BEAUTIFUL😊❤❤❤❤

Husband to wife "Did you get your lead metal count today dear". Wife, "Yes dear, it was 1000 times higher than the normal" I wonder why?" Next day she is back at Textronixs spraying lead oxide on the cathodes. HMMMMM??

Just a few decades earlier, it was horse and buggy. Alien technology from Roswell et al.

Hola amigo tengo un tektronix 7603 y hace un tiempo estoy intentando repararlo si me podes ayudar ..tiene un plug in 7L12

Wow just think how much more complicated a storage tube must be to manufacture

The CRT will replace my 4K flat screen in the future I can see it.

What a pain to make. I would imagine there was a big dumpster out back with a lot of rejects and broken glass.

So...much...engineering.

Is Hal Smith narrating this?

Like the production lines during the two world wars, this is another great example that dispels the myth that women have less mechanical aptitude. :)

Behind it all, the surface plate, as seen in some segments of this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gNRnrn5DE58.html

Yes, that does it. We're in the Matrix

based upon the minimum or total lack of ppe shown meant there was no government watchdog like osha.

I wonder who was the intended public for such video, it's divulging much technical info . It looks more like intenal training or investor info than advertising for product customers

Tektronix now make handbag scopes in China

Lots of INDUSTRIAL engineering. Machines and benches optimized to do ONE task with precision and efficiency. Lack of PPE is a bit disconcerting.

Pride? What's that?

Para entender el presente hay qué estudiar el pasado. Windows, 1,2,3,3,4,5,7,8,10,10×60= 600 ventanas,(Windows) , abiertas . Es como tener 600 televisores . En una computadora, usando diferentes perfiles en cada ventana, o canal, como por ejemplo, el canal de María y sus aventuras en You tube. Cosinando con Verónica, You tube.