Triode Vacuum Tube: History & Physics 

Abhishek Yadav thank you for the lovely comment. I started this thinking that I would learn some interesting history but I have been amazed at how much science I have learned through its history.

This is a terrific introduction to birth of electronics.

Kathy is the Greatest at what she does! Well, she may not be the Greatest but there is NONE better.

I believe that is because in its original concept the problem and solution attempts are extremely logical. You can see the trial and error and how a new phenomena is discovered and slowly understood. Then comes the formalization of the topic with committees and creation of a specialized lexicon/jargon. Yes they have value but they obfuscate the underlying truth.

venkat sivaprasannakumar so glad you liked it. Strangely, I think it helped that I knew nothing about vacuum tubes a year ago! Starting with the history really helps IMHO. Also, the old army videos are pretty good. Cheesy but good. I wished I had watched them before writing my videos.

@@Poschet0423 🤣🤣🤣🤣

So glad you liked it and thanks for becoming a patron!

So glad you liked it. I learned this stuff through its history so I am often a little nervous that I got it right (on the other hand, it might have helped me to learn engineering so long after being comfortable with Physics so who knows).

Thanks for watching

Thank you so much that was lovely. I have finished my first book “The Lightning Tamer” which is on how electricity got into the home and it is up for pre-sale on Amazon and from the local bookstore. When that dies down I can focus more on my second book which is on the history of wireless including stories like this.

If you consider the fact that the television was invented by a 14-year-old, it makes perfect sense that you were qualified to fix them at 16! I bet you did a better job than the adults.

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics I had a successful career working in electronics. I have worked extensively with fiber optic, digital microwave and satellite down to breaking out all those little circuits and testing them. I also did some trunked radio. My phone rang a lot for advice. Heck, it still does from time to time and I’m retired. during my free time I built houses, worked on my own vehicles even rebuilding engines and automatic transmissions.

Wow!

I worked for aTV repair shop when I was 16 ~ 17 . After I made a few service calls by myself , the boss said I needed to grow a mustache and beard , because the lonely housewife customers complined and said I looked too young .

This super-regenerative TRF radio works very well (page 43) I made, back in the 70s when I was a teenager it but without the reaction, as I was concerned not to broadcast rather than receive.

I agree.

Isn’t that book fabulous?

huang chao thanks! Glad you liked it

You are welcome! Thanks for subscribing and commenting

Thank you for the coveted triple wow (with a bonus wow for good luck)! I appreciate it. - Kathy

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics - Yes, I now see that in my exuberance I did give you a bonus wow! I just willy-nilly went from a double wow, past the triple straight to the quadruple. I guess my inner self disagreed with my outer self and felt you deserved the extra praise. Honestly, the biggest thrill of RU-vid is getting feedback from the content's originator, especially one of its titans like you. Make no mistake, while you "only" have 98.1 thousand subscribers, you really represent the top half-of-one-percent of presenters, in my opinion. So what some 16 year old making arm pit noises and/or jumping into his parent's swimming pool filled with jello have a million subscribers, you not only have your own self respect, but also you have the respect of 98,100 extremely discerning, but perhaps counting impaired as is the case with me, viewers applauding your content and being enriched by it. You give me hope for the world. You help keep the tent of knowledge upright that is seemingly eternally being buffeted by the chaos of our conspiracy mesmerized society.

youtubasoarus so glad you liked it.

Wasn’t that a fun book? Thank you so much for the giant compliment.

Glad I could help.

I actually have a printed advertisement for that service that was in drug stores

I know a vintage audio repair, sell, and trade store where they have a tube tester.

You are so right to bring up Irving Langmuir, who was officially _too clever by three-quarters._ He made great contributions to the design of vacuum tubes and got himself a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in an unrelated field.

The low frequency audio signal is carried” to the radio receiver by the radio frequency wave. The carrier is modulated with the audio to form an AM signal. Imagine this composite signal displayed on a oscilloscope with the waves mean centred on the zero y graticule. If you algebraically sum the upper and lower side bands you end up with zero volts. Remove either the upper or lower sidebands by passing it through a diode rectifier and low pass filter and you end up with the original audio signal to amplify and play through the speaker. Hope that is clear?

I’m planning on it but I have a long way to go till I reach it. Sorry

And mention how the Americans, having invented the transistor, totally failed to get it working at radio frequencies, leaving that avenue open to the Japanese to create the transistor radio and other light, compact transistorized consumer appliances. Why? Because 🇺🇸 had a massive investment in its existing vacuum-tube business for radio-frequency work, while 🇯🇵 had none.

I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and they said it was patented in 1910 but it was used between 1906 and 1910 where they would put two receivers on a headband. Check out the wiki on Nathanial Baldwin.

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics ok tks so much. !

Armstrong is amazing and I mention him a lot

That is awesome. I don’t understand people who stop being interested in learning new things - I am honored to be part of your continued education

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics l am a bit of a tinker . And built my own solar power/heat plant. So I use little in carbon. Gas for heat in cold winter. So some build clocks, ships in bottles, and I build radios. On cold winter nights. To labour all evening. Then do the "smoke test" and hear that radio gasp it's first few seconds. Then the voice/music comes thrugh. Is victory! A good life to you. 73 de kv4li

Diego Ochoa That is not rude and honestly Edison has such a large factory of inventors by the late 1800s you never knew what came from him and what came from someone else. Considering how busy he was at the time, my guess would be that his engineer discovered it and that he decided that it was useful as a voltmeter and patented it.

Yes. The tube amp has a high input impedance unlike the bipolar transistor.

It looks to be very large custom built laboratory vacuum tube tester at a vacuum tube manufacturer. I recognize a lot of the meters. They are laboratory grade meters from the best makers. Really neat to see this picture. Also most likely for testing larger power grid tubes, I would say...

@@chrisreeland7248 Thanks Chris, honestly, I just looked up covers from old Radio News magazines and took one that I thought was cool.

I built a guitar amp with the goal of using tubes not normally used there as well. It has 6dj8 tubes and uses one of them in cascode. Unfortunately I never had much luck learning to play.

@@canuckprogressive.3435 Ahaa.... E88CC is our Brit counterpart for 6dj8. I think they both like 130volts or less on the plate. Mu is a third of 12ax7. I am an old UK 70's punk... you don't need many chords to have a fun time. Good luck. 😊😊