Modern Electronics (was Re: List charter mods & headcount... ;

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun Jun 20 21:45:53 2004

>
> On Sun, 20 Jun 2004, David V. Corbin wrote:
>
> > >Does it matter that some knowledge is lost as generations go on?
> >
> > I think it does matter. Thinking "Those who forget the past are doomed to
> > repeat it".
>
> Are we really "doomed" to re-invent the vacuum tube? ;)

You might joke, but a few years ago (and I don't mean 50 years ago :-)),
I was reading about a new device that was consisted essentially of
field-emitting (rather than thermionic emitting) valves etched into a
silicon chip. The principles, other than the cathode, of course, were
identical to those of the valve. The advantage of such devices is that
they were much more radiation-hard than conventional transsitor-based chips.

A few years before that I read about a new sort of memory, based on
quantized magnetic flux through a superconduction loop. The principle of
reading and writing were identical to core memory. I remember laughing as
they descrived provlems and possible solutions that were totally obvious
to anyone who'd ever worked on said ferrite core memory....

-tony
Received on Sun Jun 20 2004 - 21:45:53 BST