AT&T Archives: A Modern Aladdin's Lamp, about vacuum tubes,1940

See more from the AT&T Archives at techchannel.att.com/archives
There were two versions of this film made; this is the short version. Watch for footage of the ridiculously huge vacuum tubes that were used for radio transmission.
From the original 1940 documentation:
"With Western Electric Vacuum Tubes in the starring roles, this film tells the fascinating story of tube development from the first crude bulbs of Edison and De Forest to the powerful and efficient tubes in use today, and shows the prominent part they play in radio, long-distance telephony, public address systems, sound motion pictures and the phonograph.
Animated sequences depicting a traffic cop halting an on-rush of electrons inside a tube and a troupe of monkeys tossing pebbles at a grid explain the three-element tube so clearly that a non-technical audience can understand how it operates.
Scenes in the tube shop show the precision workmanship that goes into the making of broadcasting and telephone repeater tubes. The camera moves from one intricate operation to another while skilled craftsmen transform spools of wire and rods of glass into these magic lamps of today."
Footage courtesy of AT&T Archives and History Center, Warren, NJ

[@dhepaksomu]

Who are all addicted to these kind of classic educational videos?

[@zordmaker]

Haha. I am an electrical engineer 51 years old.. and this vid still explains electricity better than I've ever seen it explained, anywhere else, ever.

[@MrHans818]

My mother worked at Bendix Radio in the middle 40s to the middle 50s and then Westinghouse Corp. She could tell you all about this,. She even built her first Tv before I was born in 55. Most people take electrics for granted what when you think about' what great minds these people had.

[@johnmorgan4368]

I agree, I was so confused in high school chemistry by the completely inaccurate way the electron cloud of an atom was portrayed.

[@camerond8176]

My thoughts exactly.......................He perfectly and easily described exactly how they work, why they work and why they are designed the way they are. Today's youth have NO IDEA how things actually work, only that they work and how to cry when they don't.

[@huntsbychainsaw5986]

If electricity and electrical components were explained like this in high school I probably would have done better with electrical theory...

[@huntsbychainsaw5986]

@@camerond8176 Easy now, not everyone under 50 is incompetent.

[@NestorCustodio]

I love that these old gems are being preserved and made available to the masses.

[@Kamel419]

@reverse thrust everyone who has internet access and can visit youtube = the masses

[@adamogilvie6951]

Same here. I am a relatively young guy. But still I see stuff like this and imagine the world my Grandmother and Great Grandmother grew up in . My Grandmother is 84 years old now and we often laugh about the technology she grew up with compared to the technology we live with now. She can't believe it. Even when I was going to high-school cell phones weren't really a thing. I remember having to remember like 30 numbers in memory and going to a pay phone. Lol!

[@fernandoantoniobernalbarei1415]

Estados Unidos a llamada internacional a Paraguay los 1940

[@daytondario6216]

instablaster...

[@nickimtamyirmidortharfli..]

​@@adamogilvie6951 you bought 86??

[@JohnRaschedian]

It's funny that no one in the end of the video says, "Please hit the like button, smash the bell icon and subscribe."

[@JohnMichaelson]

Modern presenters could learn a lot from the clear and simple analogies and illustrations made in this video when explaining to lay people how concepts work.

[@programmingandfinance8239]

+John Michaelson i saw a lot of these old documentaries and found out they teach from basics and precise about the concepts related,,, modern teaching lacks depth and precision

[@ai4px]

Good luck... the "journalists" of today don't understand how things work enough to convey it to you. They seem to love filling page space with words and jumping around. What have our colleges produced these days? I tried to find out specifics about 5G cell phone protocols and all I could find were articles that said "it is fast" and described all the things I could do with this speed... but not a word about orthogonal multiplexing, spread spectrum or even what frequencies.

[@peggyfranzen6159]

John Michaelson Or from Nikola Tesla"s physics, and exxperiments.100 years from now the question will be " Who was Thomas Alva Edison.?"

[@ShaunDreclin]

@@ai4px You're comparing journalism to videos produced by the manufacturers of the product. Of course they aren't going to be on the same level. Do you think the newspapers in the 1940s went this in depth explaining how a vacuum tube works? No, they just said "it is fast".

[@patrioticwhitemail9119]

@@ShaunDreclin you fail to realise companys refuse to cover their technology now. Showing off your technology back then was done as marketing, to show customers how their products are reliable, and why it's worth buying their luxuries. Modern products aren't made to last like back then (planned obsolescence started by the GM company), so there's no reason to show how it's made. There is also no need to explain how it works either. Showing how it works is pointless when people already know "it works because... I dunno". Explaining it back then was necessary because you needed to know which way the electricity was going to use it. You don't need to know how bluetooth works to sink to your speaker.

[@Guitcad1]

This actually does a better job of explaining vacuum tubes than a lot of modern presentations I've seen.

[@ronalddaub9740]

We had the last vacuum tube electronics class in high school in 1974 75 the book I had explained it pretty good. Along with the teacher we had and we made a 5-tube radio.

[@Langkowski]

If this was a modern youtube video it would have lasted at least 90 minutes and used forever to get to the point

[@kovy689]

@@LangkowskiSame with schools today

[@Wandrng_drifter]

21:04 “there will be no end to the miracles of this modern Aladdins lamp... the vacuum tube!” The transistor: *I’m about to wreck this man’s whole career*

[@LMB222]

MOSFET: I'm going to wreck the transistor.

[@ananda_miaoyin]

@@LMB222 Semi conductive memetic gallium : I am gong to wreck the transistor and the MOSFET. In 2042. Less than 100 years after the transistor was formed. Who said Moore's Law is bullshit!?

[@knightwatchman]

I have a 1962 Motorola radio and phonograph console that uses vacuum tubes. It still works. No tube has ever blown out but I don't use it much. The sound of both the radio and phonograph is still excellent. Love the way the radio has to warm up before it starts to emit sound.

[@waylondeming1209]

Love these old industrial films. A real tribute to manufacturing in this country.

[@juliam.mallen9019]

Well said 👌🇺🇸🦅

[@MrPhred]

As an old geezer, I really enjoyed this video. I actually own a Western Electric 102-F "repeater" vacuum tube (in the original, bulb-shaped form factor). It was pulled from one of the last voice repeaters in my area - nearly identical to the repeater shown in the video. The label on it indicates it was put into service in 1931, and it was still operating flawlessly around 40 years later when it was removed from service. The combination of Bell Labs research and Western Electric manufacturing resulted in some awesome components back then.

[@commodoresixfour7478]

Good thing you can still get them made. There is a few youtubers on here still hand making electron tubes. Amplifier tubes are also still manufactured today. They may be inefficient today but they still produce superior sound.

[@povnw8985]

Wow. You must be so old your balls float up when you sit in the tub 😹

[@eugenecbell]

POV NW, why are you an ass?

[@michaelinglis8516]

I loved this video and others like it I watched last night but it's painfully obvious why are new stock tubes are so poor these days. It's no longer an art and even the duds are now sold. Less quality control less skilled workers etc. It's amazing that repeater tube lasted 40 years. Meanwhile as a guitar player im having a hard time getting my EL34 output tubes in my Marshall to last me a year, NOS (new old stock) still exists but only for so long. I just wish a company would step up and invest in making quality tubes again and not have any ties to the few company's that own all the current production tubes. As it is Tung-sol, SOVTEK, electro harmonix, JJ Tesla, Mullard and others are all owned by one or two company's and all produced side by side in a handful of factories in Russia and China. With new production tubes I often go through a few sets before I find one that doesn't have any defects. It's just pathetic.

[@cat-lw6kq]

I was a tech with AT&T and remember replacing Line Repeaters made by Western Electric that were 30 years old. Many of them were still working but they were getting tired and I didn't want to re-enter that manhole again.

[@SigEpBlue]

That whole "monkeys throwing pebbles at a target through a shutter" bit at 9:00 had me cracking up. I never would have thought of making such an analogy to controlling electron flow, so props for creativity there!

[@RideRedRacer]

See how America used to be great, you could say something and not offend people. now liberals ruined that. dont hurt their feelings guys. be nice now

[@porkyfedwell]

Anyone who's been to the monkey exhibit at the Zoo knows what they're really throwing! It's the Ancient Art of Flung Poo.

[@8800081]

You could never show that analogy as an example today, anywhere but KZbin, the libs would be calling you racist and if that's what comes to their mind then there are the ones that are racist. There's a ridiculous amount of things you'll never see today, especially in school textbooks. You'll never see a girl using an iron or a boy using a hammer, in fact these days you'll never even see anything identifiable as a girl or boy. This world is dead.

[@ShaunDreclin]

@@8800081 I see a whole lot of people in this comment section whining about "what the liberals would say" and not any liberals actually saying anything. You've invented a caricature of what a liberal actually is so that you can feel good about yourself. Try actually _talking_ to the average moderate liberal and you'll find you agree on most topics. As much as you may think they are or want them to be, most issues are not partisan.

[@Perktube1]

@@porkyfedwell ha!… true.

[@truthbydesign5146]

I’m fascinated by the birth of our modern computer driven world. Vacuum tubes were invented in 1904, just 10 years before my grandmother was born. Today we have access to a lightweight M1 iPad Pro with 16 billion transistors, capable of 11 trillion operations per second. To put that in perspective, it would take multiple Boeing sized factories filled to the rafters with Vacuum tubes, and 70 nuclear power plants just to power the equivalent number of circuits (But of course it would still be just a minuscule fraction of the speed of one iPad, taking years to accomplish what iPad can in one second)

[@ujean56]

Imagine how proud you could be working in a tube factory. Artisands for sure. Skilled labour in a high tech facility in North America.

[@jamesslick4790]

"Midgets in a Subway Crowd" is my band's latest album.

[@thermionic1234567]

I bought a great Roxy Music album because of the cover and suspect your album will be equally-good because of its title!

[@kwoods3379]

CPU water cooling in 1940

[@AckzaTV]

like midget data in a hyperloop tube, your voice current goes out into the ether

[@StephenJamieson]

When the CPU was literally one transistor

[@punman5392]

@@StephenJamieson the ENIAC had something like 24,000 tubes. Imagine cooling all that

[@TheScreamingFrog916]

From "magic" light bulbs, to my iPad, what an amazing world we live in today. I'm a retired tech, and this was actually very informative, and easy to understand. Great production values, fast moving, entertaining, and fun music. Looking at all those tube repeater amps on the wall, made me think, how cool it would have been, to convert them all to guitar amps. LOL

[@TheOldCatFunt]

I was particularly impressed by the 1940 teleprompter the narrator used 😊

[@eldontyrellcorp]

I felt in love with vacuum tube technology when I was a kid. My grand parents had a color tv which used tubes, and also a tubes radio we were listening to every Wednesday. I was fascinated by these glowing components. Now I'm repairing old tube radios...

[@thomaspierce9458]

My uncle used to repair radios and televisions up until the early 1980s. In the late 70s, I would take tubes to the pharmacy which had a tube tester. My folks had an Admiral 'hybrid' 25-inch(26-inch in the U.S.) colour TV. Some of its circuitry was transistorized. Its tubes ran at a reduced voltage so they needed less time to warm up, making it almost instant-on...

[@vaultdweller2511]

The narrator in 1940's movies like this always sounds so lovely optimistic

[@frozencanuck3521]

The vacuum tube assembly line process is amazing to watch.

[@coldwar1952]

"....all these things and more happened, because of a single product of individual enterprise, and THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE. And so long as they endure, there will be no end to the miracles of this modern Aladdin's lamp, the vacuum tube....". WE/Bell Labs - The greatest collection of technical talent and innovation mankind has yet known.

[@randyhenry2477]

Amazing precision factory robots in use for being 1940. Clear glass tubes have fascinated me since grade school. I'm 69.

[@ananda_miaoyin]

Yeah, it is . They almost look like real humans, too. Sucks that NASA lost the tech to make them just like the moon landing telemetry and vehicle designs.

[@lsq7833]

1940's watercooled vacuum tubes ! And here I am with a watercooled processor with over 3 billion transistors... Puts things in perspective about how much progress has been achieved... Very interesting video!

[@grendelum]

lsq78 - water cooled glassware has been around as long as modern glassware has... the 10W mixed-gas white light laser I worked with at a planetarium had a water cooled laser tube (with a 5-ton water chiller out back) that was indeed a very functional work of art.

[@jimc3688]

And those CPUs require a $1B Wafer fab and lots of nasty chemicals and huge amounts of water resources. Just saying 😎

[@jr2904]

​@@jimc3688 shut up jim

[@goodun6081]

Think about this: repeater tubes were installed in enclosures attached to transatlantic telephone cables sitting on the ocean floor!

[@fl0atpvnk]

I really enjoy these old timey “how it’s done” videos.

[@The_A_Cast]

You know you’re watching a gem of a video when it refers to a video as a “talking picture” 😊

[@aaryjan]

Amazing.. the narrator tells elaborately about the components in the tube, how they are set up, compares them, tells what they are used for .. and doesn't breathe a word about how they actually work, amplify

[@BetamaxFlippy]

Of all the modern illustrations and videos these old documentaries along with old tech magazines made me learn 20 times better. New documentaries tend to be as theoretic as hell and it's easy to get distracted and mislead

[@SciHeartJourney]

Vacuum tube technology is awesome! This was once state of the art, now its nostalgic. That's some fine engineering there!

[@nagakamo]

Western Electric vacuum tube is a myth of high quality here in Japan too. This video gave me a clear image of WE. Thank you for upload. I have some American made tubes licensed to Sylvania from WE produced for military service in WWII. I am going to make a DIY audio amplifier using those tubes. They are indeed beautiful and reliable ones.

[@BlazingBlakesGaming]

I have a few here I laughed when they said 50,000 hours how about 65 years and still going strong?

[@nagakamo]

Yes, they say "over 50,000 hours". That's counted as 5.7 years if run for 24 hours 365 days. But when used in consumer audio, lifetime of tubes will not be counted in this way. One of the reason is that there is rush current into filament when power gets on. It slightly damages cold filament. So it doesn't reach 65 years even when you use tubes only a couple of hours a day. I think normal lifetime of consumer audio tube is less than 10 years especially when you expect good sound quality.

[@porkyfedwell]

@@nagakamo I wonder why they didn't put something in the circuits that would have more slowly ramped up the power, to increase tube lifespan?

[@orange70383]

@@porkyfedwell Some did.

[@jamesmcdonough440]

W3pmv

[@manusudha4269]

You just can't imagine how happy I am to watch this video ! Thank you very much .

[@almostfm]

Back in my radio days (late 80s to late 90s) our AM transmitter had four tubes that were probably as big around as my thigh. Those things put out so much heat that the AC in that room ran 24/7-even in the middle of winter.

[@BrEaKiNg_Brad]

"like midgets in a subway crowd" lol you can't beat the analogy. It's perfect.

[@howardwayne3974]

If a broadcaster dared say something like that over the air nowadays , some smartassed fresh out of legal school would try to sue his ( or her ) ass off on behalf of all the midgets and try to get him ( or her ) fired . notice how careful I'm being .

[@jblyon2]

Excuse me Mr. Announcer, HR would like a word with you

[@js4653]

At 19:30 is a policeman in his car using his mobile vacuum tube radio set. The policeman's arm patch says "Kearny Police". Kearny NJ is where Western Electric had a huge manufacturing plant.

[@cengeb]

"like MIDGETS in a subway crowd"!!! Electrons in AIR!

[@chriskazaglis]

cengeb It was not a time of political correctness. It was both funny and offensive. The phrase did help me understand the reason for a vacuum.

[@BrandochGarage]

fantastic. Love it. Came for the monkeys, stayed for the wonderful footage of the workers making the tubes there by hand. How industrious we used to be!

[@abhishekmallik1194]

No clean rooms, no special uniforms, just simple production. Yet some of these tubes still work till date.

[@AJFreeway]

It might be because vacuum tubes aren't nearly as common nowadays, but I learned more in a few minutes of this video than any modern video on the subject. The examples were funny and very informative, and the subject matter is clearly explained.

[@baronobeefdip2]

+AJFreeway the only difference between the tubes of today and the ones described in the video is that these days, tubes have a metal tube snuggly fit around the filament known as the cathode, it makes design easier so you only have to apply one lead to create a circuit between the plate and filament/cathode.

[@michaelwoods9005]

+Joshua Lopez they've always had a cathode, that's what releases the electrons. the animations in the film are grossly oversimplified for demonstration purposes. some cathodes are directly heated, some are indirectly heated by a filament.

[@baronobeefdip2]

michael Woods I was kinda referring to the early deforest audion tubes. They just had filaments.

[@SlyPearTree]

That filament is what is called a directly heated cathode.

[@baronobeefdip2]

SlyPearTree yep, but since higher amounts of power applied tended to burn it out, the cathode was created to make the tube handle power beyond what the filament was handling before it burned out.

[@menthol-bonbon1726]

Amazing explanation! Also I love the nice and clear American English they spoke back then on TV. English is not my first language and yeat I did understand every single word effortlessly.

[@lincolnkarim1]

I learn a great deal from these and old US Army training videos. I had the pleasure of visiting CBS TV transmitter room on the 108/109 floor of WTC Building #1. The first fully Solid State (FET), high power transmitter (at least in NY). We regularly stopped by to visit on our way up to the roof to service our antenna.

[@scottcasper187]

This was the best explanation I’ve yet seen

[@williamschultz8470]

I am so glad that these older movies and educational films are still in reach I learned so much. Awesome

[@zacharypike6408]

For the life of me I could not understand how vacuum tubes work, but this video explained how they work perfectly. Thank You.

[@johneygd]

Without the invention of the lamp,there would,ve be no computer these day's, it blows my mind how such small little device have changed the world.

[@jimc3688]

Actually, FETs were already invented and being experimented with.

[@AlexBesogonov]

Not really. Vacuum tube computers were second generation of computers (electromechanical relays were the first), but once transistors became available, they switched immediately.

[@Alex-zc8ds]

i remember the tv set of my grandmother with vacuum tubes i was eager boy that time i used to peek the back of the tv set while it was working and amazed seeing so much bulb inside that lights

[@toresbe]

Interestingly, this film has itself been scanned by a vacuum tube film scanner. You can see the green tube in saturation at 19:00, in the cockpit windshield.

[@ZenPunk]

Nice catch!

[@montey1017]

Very cool haha

[@Vincent_Sullivan]

Is this the reason for the "green flash" you see on the woman's hands at 15:27???

[@douglasburskey4820]

It's amazing what vacuum tubes could do. That's why I love vintage radios and other tube electronics.

[@jr2904]

We were great at making mechanical masterpieces back then

[@mikicerise6250]

Americans always seem so much more well-spoken in old videos. I also like the early-20th century American accent much better than the modern one.

[@shopdog831]

we all got dumber thanks to low education standards.

[@PhaQ2]

So true. When Bush senior decided to implement the "No Child Left Behind" initiative to give everybody a trophy. He destroyed two generations of Americans and now we have Social Justice Warriors instituting their politically correct, censorship. And groups like BLM can call for the death of cops and white people.

[@d.jensen5153]

You are asserting that the fact that the average teen doesn't talk like Lowell Thomas is because of George H W Bush and not pop culture? I'm guessing you were one of those left behind.

[@cat-lw6kq]

I was watching a class of students learning English and they were watching old episodes of I Love Lucy from the 1950's. This is how they learn English.

[@jamesplotkin4674]

@@shopdog831 And pants on the ground. Lookin' like a fool...

[@JJceo]

"And to reach the plate, the electrons would have to bump their way through them, like midgets in a subway crowd." - 6:56

[@robertthomas4329]

Genius

[@LMacNeill]

I don't know... I think the "aroused monkeys" at around the 9:05 mark is a worse comment than the "midgets in a subway crowd" comment. ;-)

[@povnw8985]

I love midgets. They make great pets 😐

[@Kelvin5378]

@@povnw8985 and great snacks

[@robb1859]

sounds like a jim carr joke

[@drewthompson7457]

So Edison's filaments broke at the positive end. I wonder if he ever thought of using AC power?

[@jimc3688]

I’m sure he / his engineers did. But that would be blasphemy !

[@dondesnoo1771]

He didn't like Tesla s ac ideas as he had too much investment in DC. As time would tell he was wrong.😄

[@mydogbrian4814]

@@dondesnoo1771 - And that is why Washington D.C. is the only place left where they still use Direct Current.

[@jr2904]

​@@mydogbrian4814 you're out of your mind

[@mydogbrian4814]

@j r *Apparently so!* Another example of sarcasm gone awri. The intent of the pun escapes me. Sorry! ___, Oh I remember now! It was in referance to comments on *D.C.* current. And I extrapolated it to Washington *DC.* - kinda lame, huh? 🙄👎

[@pedroruiz3943]

My HS chemistry teacher showed this in class once. I finally watched it without falling asleep after all these years.

[@mikeklaene4359]

Great video. A slight slap at Edison for not trying to understand the "Edison Effect". Lowell Thomas had a good "Radio Voice". I got into "playing" with vacuum tubes while still in grade school in the 50's. An Uncle gave a kit for a regenerative radio that used a single tube. It was of a "breadboard" design and the map to the components was on a piece of paper glued to a small piece of plywood and it required a 1.5 V "A" battery and a 45 V "B" battery. With tubes it is possible to picture how they work. Not so with semi-conductors.

[@LMacNeill]

Lowell Thomas!!! *That* was his name!! That was driving me nuts -- I knew I knew him, but I couldn't think of his name at all.

[@jamesplotkin4674]

@@LMacNeill Did you not observe the opening credits?

[@drewthompson7457]

I learned electronics in the tube days. You could follow a schematic and see what happens. One of the later TV's i repaired, from the tuner, the signal went into a big chip, and various signals came out for video, audio, verticle and horizontal drive. What was wrong? A big difficult to replace chip. A projector I worked on had a huge chip in it. Over 200 pins, soldered into different levels of a 7 layer PC Board. The projector was scrapped.

[@Perktube1]

I had decent training on semiconductors. You just needed flukes and O'scopes to help.

[@tjmpls4905]

Mike, Your description of your single tube regenerative radio kit sounds very much like a kit I had in the late 1950s. It used a 45 V “B” battery and a standard 1.5 V D cell for the “A” battery. It was a breadboard design, as you describe, and had a 3-4” upright wood piece on the front to hold the variable capacitor for tuning and a potentiometer for the regeneration control. I don't recall if the power switch was built into the pot, or a separate switch. It had a single headphone with a spring metal piece the fit over your head. You could also connect the headphone to different fahnestock clips and allegedly use it as a radio transmitter with the headphone serving as the microphone. I never had much success with getting that to work. A few years later I got an updated version of the same kit. Instead of the breadboard, it now fitted into red plastic case. While now more portable, you still needed to hook it to an antenna and ground to use it. I hadn’t though about this radio for a while-thanks for the memory jog.

[@nunyabizness199]

I wonder though if anyone remembers who made the amazing machinery used to make those millions of vacuum tubes...😨

[@geoben1810]

What's equally fascinating is the machinery that makes the tubes and who invented it?

[@grendelum]

9:00 I’m *_so_* in love with this animation for *_so_* many reasons...

[@RX3AKT]

Отличный фильм! Выбило слезу от ностальгии. Сколько дырок в ладонях получено от удара анодного напряжения в несколько тысяч вольт! Электронные лампы живы! HAM radio sins 1972. Born 1953. 73!

[@christophermontilla4748]

I remember poring through voluminous works about early endeavors into electronics. Thanks to the discipline Mr. Edison and others after him who exerted much time and effort to bring us the science and technologies we now enjoy at the comfort of a finger

[@3beltwesty]

17:45 Tube is a WE 101F tube. 4.1 volt filament voltage. 4 prong. 3 elements. Plate grid filament. The 101F has a filament current of 0.5 amp and the 101D is 1 amp. This Triode of course is Western Electrics audio frequency tube for their repeaters.

[@draalchemist]

I love these videos. I have some tube radio receivers working, a tube tester and lots of circuits diagram. I enjoy actual technology, but I still love tubes and old transistor hardware. These things are important to me for the history they have behind. Thanks for uploading this❤❤❤

[@gantmj]

This is better than "How It's Made".

[@grahambird1570]

Amazing >>> This was when Man lived Proud and Proper !!!

[@Kawka1122]

Great times indeed. Tech development and reaching for new. Engineering was a valued skill back then.

[@Rodedog55]

This contribution here posted, is a joy to watch and appreciate. Thank you a million times over ! Thank you for posting it, and allowing the people to learn from it. I was overjoyed !!!

[@jourwalis-8875]

What fantastic machines they had in the 40s to manufacture these tubes. Even if there were much manual work also.

[@Dinkledorpher]

Very nice. I grew up with tubes in the Air Force as an electronic tech in the Cold War. I have many in my collection, including some Marconi tubes.

[@garygreer1854]

Excellent, thanks for posting this.

[@robertcuminale1212]

You're old if you can remember when drug stores had vacuum tube testing machines and stocked the tubes.

[@grendelum]

Robert Cuminale - did you ever see a shoe store x-ray machine? The ones to check the fit of the new shoes?

[@Teewriter]

Well thanks for the reminder.

[@foureyedchick]

When I was a young girl, my dad took me to Walgreens to check the tubes of our Zenith color TV set. This was in the 1960s.

[@almostfm]

Ours was in the nearby Radio Shack. By the time I was about 8, dad would pull the suspected bad tube, give me enough money to replace it if necessary, and send me down to check if the tube was bad and get the replacement if necessary. He could continue with whatever he was doing while I got the new tube.

[@TheNeonRabbit]

I remember when they installed the machines

[@BigEightiesNewWave]

Hand soldering leads.. wow ! So much hands-on work performed!

[@8BitNaptime]

I love these films, the amount of toil that went into making them is amazing.

[@Langkowski]

Imagine working with custom-made and (at least partly) hand-crafted vacuum tubes. Not many of those jobs left.

[@airborne2876]

Beautifully inspired short document!

[@spacemissing]

Big companies don't always make the big innovations. Western Electric did a lot of the hard work in developing rugged and durable tubes, but it was two imaginative brothers working in a modest building in a small village (Halcyon, CA, a mere 15 miles or so from where I live) --- and later at Stanford University --- who came up with the klystron.

[@tetrabromobisphenol]

Yep, the Varian brothers, the founders of what is now Silicon Valley.

[@mr.crighton9491]

my 1969 Fender Super Reverb amp is still rocking loud with those tubes, still original. Techs love to see the amp and handle those tubes.

[@waterheaterservices]

What a enjoyable film!

[@WaveArsenal]

"like midgets in a subway crowd!" 😂

[@scottwolf1131]

My Transcendant Sound T -16s are OTL,Output Transformerless, Amplifiers. 16 Russian 6C19PI Military grade triodes/channel. A buck seventy a piece,surplus from Russia, in the circuit they make magic. Far superior to the Class A MOSFET amps I was building. This video , amazing History, many thanks.

[@peterw4338]

One error being "elections speed through the cables" is incorrect. It is the electrical flow that speeds; electrons pass along the cable at a snails pace.

[@ricdale7813]

Absolutely beautiful presentation and of Great Historical Technical significance.

[@njmikec]

I love this. Thank you.

[@904C5ZOSIX]

Finally, I have 14 tube amplifier. Least I know how they are made. 😊👍

[@briang.7206]

The repeater tube made by western electric was an amplifier used in underwater telephone lines. Western Electric made many improvements to the vacuum tube.

[@vingotaq777]

And even today the Vac Tube is still being used in high end Hi -Fi , Respect for those technicians of the past

[@vittoriobacchiega9118]

I" m using a microphone preamplifier built for audio recordings and I have an hi-fi preamp and amplifier for a high efficency loudspeakers. The tubes have again best performances for specific purpose where the mechanical requirements are not primarly requested (audio and RF power transmitter, magnetron it's a vacuum tube and X ray tube, night vision device use a photomultiplicator).

[@midcenturymodern9330]

These films are like time travel to me. Fascinating stuff.

[@ReRey]

You did me return to fantastic period of vac tubes 😭 i remember my diperation research PL95 for sound system

[@Perktube1]

Wonderful explanation.

[@pearlmax]

Audiophiles be like "My home stereo uses so much power I need a circulating water cooling system, but it sounds "warm".

[@stevenmandeli6932]

Amazing robotics and talented women. Never knew how complicated it was to make a vacuum tube. Too bad the transistor would soon make those machines and talents obsolete.

[@jimc3688]

They mostly explained simple three element triode tubes. Pentode, five element, were soon to follow. Dual tubes and subminiature also came later. Lots and lots of other types as well. Having a 2” thick RCA, Sylvania, or GE tube catalogue was a very prized possession.

[@nekomakhea9440]

"They'd have to push their way through, like midgets in a subway crowd" XD

[@yardleybottles6025]

Great vid. Thanks!

[@michaeldomansky8497]

Love It! Thank you.

[@johnb332]

Lowell Thomas, the voice American's loved to listen too.

[@chem100]

Very interesting and informative.

[@rowlandh25]

Awesome video

[@youreale]

Fascinating.

[@DannyBeans]

I like to imagine this guy just stood there and recited his entire speech to the techs.

[@alexbara9837]

So clear, so simple, so smart

[@rjlchristie]

Thermionic valves make for the best sounding amps and will never die. Hook 'em up to a trio of single coils with selector switch in position 4 and you'll be smokin' dude.

[@jr2904]

Sorry man, but digital has replaced that. Amp models in 2023 can produce the same sound

[@rjlchristie]

@@jr2904 Some people like processed cheese, others artisan made real deal. Actually, digital technology models an ideal sound (or think of it as typical response of an amp style or even that of particular existent amplifiers. As such they present a fixed transfer response subject to input parameters. A real hard-wired tube amp is far more organic and variable and plays that way too. They're personal.

[@TheGuitologist]

This is a valuable resource. Thanks for posting this! I've watched a few such vacuum tube videos now, including one about Mullard in England, and it seems women did the bulk of the factory work making tubes.

[@hippiekarl7]

+Brad Linzy (The Guitologist) There ~was~ a World War going on at the time.....so, there's that.

[@WAQWBrentwood]

+hippiekarl7 This film is U.S. made 1940, So prewar in US. The electrical industry seems to have had female workers (not just "clerical") going back many years, and not just in wartime. Westinghouse had women building components for motors and generators as far back as 1905. My grandmother, two of her sisters (Not even going to bother about male members of my family) worked for Westinghouse in peacetime. Just about every American radio manufacturing company (when such a thing existed) also had many female workers. At the risk of sounding stereotypical, I believe that they were considered more precise and less " ham handed"! of course today humans of both genders have been replaced by robots.

[@TheGuitologist]

I think women worked for less on average than men and this kind of work - repetitive and precision oriented - was, at the risk of sounding politically incorrect today, well suited to women. It wasn't just wartime.

[@aaronedw77]

+The Guitologist Then, as now electronics work was precision work. On average women had, and continue to have smaller hands than the average man. This has obvious advantages for precision work. The lower pay was just a side benefit in the minds of the corporations.

[@orgami100]

Mullard made very high quality tubes..

[@falautomation]

I love the monkeys grid control analogy of vacuum tubes

[@terrylm235]

Good to know the value of the vacuum tube.

[@makerKID5]

Such an amazing invention.

[@shopdog831]

and still used in a great deal of commercial industries and safety systems. + microwaves which literally couldn't work without them.