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

From: der Mouse <mouse_at_Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA>
Date: Mon Jun 21 11:56:07 2004

>> Again, I'm thinking in terms of vacuum tubes, and I can't see how
>> losing the knowledge of how they worked is going to affect the
>> future, or even the present for that matter.
> I'm guessing that there is at least one piece of equipment in your
> house that relies on a vacuum tube to opperate that is not some sort
> of display device.

Aside from legacy electronics (I have some pre-transistor-era equipment
lying around), for which transistor versions exist, I can't think of
any. The only thing I'm not sure of is the microwave oven - does the
microwave-generation-thingy depend on vacuum?

But I'd also like to point out that the knowledge being putatively lost
is not the basics of how vacuum tubes work; that knokwledge is archived
in books, and the principles are widely known even now. Rather, it is
the practical knowledge that experience brings, the "feel" for how to
use them, that is at risk.

>> We're so beyond them technologically that they are irrelevant today.
> So you don't want television, or radio, or communications satellites,
> or radar, or ...

Certainly television and radio do not depend on vacuum tubes today
(well, certainly not on the receiving end; the technology exists to
transmit with transistors, but I don't know whether it can handle the
power levels appropriate to mass broadcasting).

Radar - as above: the power transmitting stage may still be vacuum
tube, but certainly _could_ be transistor; the rest definitely can be.

Comm satellites - aren't they solid state these days?

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Received on Mon Jun 21 2004 - 11:56:07 BST