I completed a unique Christmas project. This idea was prompted by my 90-year young engineer Dad cleaning out his vacuum tube bin. I did not want to see them be trashed so imagined a way to keep and display them in contrast with new technology. The display is done in the “steampunk…ish” art style to emphasize the OLD vs NEW.
Turns out it is pretty hard to get things to RUST like you want them to.
The vacuum tube is obvious however the equivalent modern
Nice work! It is funny though that the tiny transistor you have there is actually freaking enormous when compared to transistors in current CPUs at 10nm (or even supposedly 7nm from TMSC). Crazy how the scale has changed from vacuum tubes to now!
You are right, I struggled a bit with the notion of showing the smallest transistor possible. As a result of this project I realized that most people have no clue of the dramatic change this industry has gone through … and don’t care.
I remember grabbing the tuning knob on a radio when I was a kid, while in bare feet, and getting the shit shocked out of me.
I remember going to the 7-11 to buy replacement tubes for the B/W TV whose vertical hold was always crapping out.
I remember getting my first transistor radio for christmas…
Zooming forward to now I typing on a computer that is multiple magnitudes more powerful than the eniac and next to me is a mobile communication device right out of star trek.
Thought this was interesting:
" By the end of its operation in 1956, ENIAC contained 20,000 [vacuum tubes]; 7,200 [crystal diodes]; 1,500 relays; 70,000 [resistors]; 10,000 [capacitors]; and approximately 5,000,000 hand-[soldered] joints. It weighed more than 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 2.4 m × 0.9 m × 30 m (8 ft × 3 ft × 98 ft) in size, occupied 167 m2 (1,800 sq ft) and consumed 150 kW of electricity. This power requirement led to the rumor that whenever the computer was switched on, lights in Philadelphia dimmed. Input was possible from an IBM [card reader] and an IBM [card punch] was used for output. These cards could be used to produce printed output offline using an [IBM] accounting machine, such as the [IBM 405]. While ENIAC had no system to store memory in its inception, these punch cards could be used for external memory storage. In 1953, a 100-[word] [magnetic-core memory] built by the Burroughs Corporation was added to ENIAC.
My first job was designing competing IBM compatible printers, punch card readers and punch machines!
When I was in school, we went to the air Force Base and got to look at the NORAD system. It was a maze of tubes and core memory. The air men who kept it up wore t-shirts and shorts. It was very warm! I remember thinking to myself, “is this what is keeping America safe!”
OMG yes I used to get the tv’s that the shops could not figure out how to fix… bad resistor, 4 hrs of troubleshooting $5.
Cant remember the # of time I got connected to B+ …ouch!
