WESTERN ELECTRIC Vacuum Tubes Valves "Bottleof Magic" A brief history.

[Music] Junction City by Lancaster Madison calling Jeffersonville 338 Sweetwater Virginia calling cars 19 and 38 proceed immediately to the corner ofon Jackson and make an investigation I'll make a place for you on the board of the symphony society and of course I'll put you up at my club society's clubs all I want is the woman I love it's time you faced facts Jeff and forgot all about this romantic business haven't either right to live my own life surely you don't wish to hurt your mother we want you to know that what we're doing is for your own good for my own good this is Mr JC Brown on Greenville 35682 I'd like to speak to Mr ra Dunbar at the hotel Oxford in Birmingham England please this is modern communication nerve system of the world spanning oceans as easily as it covers the miles from Farmhouse to town yet without an unimpressive looking little bottle of magic we call it simply the electron tube there would be no Communications as we know them today the electron tube had its practical beginning in this humble laboratory where a young man named Le De Forest worked in lonely isolation but the history of all the scientific achievement which proceeded to Forest work would be as difficult to trace as to uncover every withered root of a 2,000-year-old redwood tree suffice it to say then working on the flow of current in a vacuum Edison and DeForest in the United States Fleming in England John Fleming SU succeeded in developing a two element tube which detected the signals being transmitted by early radio experimenters while the Flaming tube never came into General use it is considered one of the ancestors of the modern electron tube theforest like Edison and Fleming later observed that electrical current flows readily from one electrode to another in a vacuum if a filament or cathode as it is sometimes called is heated when the cathode becomes heated electrons boil off its surface if these escaping electrons are attracted by another electrode their flow constitutes an electrical current the amount of this current is increased if the second electrode or anode as it is generally called has a sizable positive charge on its surface to attract the electrons which of course are negative this was the basis of DeForest first tube a two electrode device as was Fleming's in 19 6 DeForest observed that the two element tube became more sensitive to electrical currents when a third electrode was added this electrode which DeForest named a grid so improved Wireless reception that the three element tube was the heart of radio receivers installed for the 197 World Cruise of the United States Fleet DeForest was out in undiscovered scientific territory when he invented the grid type tube many tests were made before he realized that his invention could amplify electrical currents as well as detect them it then occurred to him that this amplification might be used to overcome the loss of volume in other types of communications equipment at the time DeForest was experimenting with his Aion a long-distance telephone call of a couple of hundred miles required a healthy pair of [Applause] luns hello all right put him on it's a long distance please you better close that door and the window hello what yes oh Gilman oh Hilton oh I can't hear you oh Hilman get a little closer to the tele in October 1912 deest took his audion to the Western Electric company's engineering department could the audion be used as a telephone amplifier well yes and no the audion was unsatisfactory as such because among other things DeForest had not removed enough of the air and the electrons from the filament collided with air molecules inside of the tube because of this the full grid effect was not utilized and thus the grid was not effective enough to control accurately the flow of current just the ordinary air we breathe present in the audon formed a gyrating Mass resisting the flow of current from one electrode to another Western Electric scientists Ed by the late Dr HD Arnold began a coordinated effort to make the audion Practical realizing the tube was no better than its vacuum they investigated special techniques developed by research workers in other fields and succeeded in adapting them for their purposes thus they were able to evacuate the Aion to a much greater degree in other words to create a really high vacuum this important step allowed the electrons to move around freely it was the Prime objective of the Western Electric engineering department as it is of the Bell Telephone Laboratories today to transform ideas into utility in the interest of better telephone service thus DeForest early Aion became Western Electric's practical electron tube an efficient piece of communications apparatus ready to take its place in the telephone team this very tube in 1915 brought transcontinental telefony making any Corner in America only as far as your nearest telephone how was it possible in such a short period of time when it had taken centuries to develop the bare fundamentals of the tube even the ingenious DeForest had struggled for years in lonely isolation fighting not only the barriers of science but also an unsympathetic public the answer is found in the unique Association of the Western Electric Company in the Bell System then as to today this unusual Association afforded the coordination of many scientists and Engineers working together toward a common end schooled in close team play through which their telephone Network had been so efficiently woven they concentrated on refinements and developments of the audon just as they had on other improvements of telepan by this Cooperative effort progress leaped ahead instead of inching forward what would have taken centuries more perhaps was funneled into a few short years of coordinated progress byproducts of the electron tube were many radio with its powerful social influence radio telefony for such important assignments as police duty these remarkable achievements of the electron tube and others too numerous to mention here ushered in a new era of convenience and Better Living to which we casually refer as the electronic age how does this magic bottle work well the tube in its Essentials is relatively simple consisting of an evacuated glass bulb with three electrodes a filament a plate and between them DeForest ingenious grid when the filament is heated electrons Nature's Elementary particles of electricity boil off being negative electrons are attracted by the positive plate their flow constitutes a current of electricity now the genius of DeForest enters by making the grid alternately positive and negative the flow of current is greatly increased and then proportionately in effect charges placed on the grid produce greatly magnified images of themselves and the tube thus acts as an amplifier but how does the electron tube help long distance telephony well telephone current carrying your voice impulses grows weak with distance as it travels along cables the weakened current enters the tube charges the grid is then reinforced on the plate the re-energized current now continues along its Swift Journey on the speech highways of the telephone just as it was at the source today we talk across the country as easily as next door and we wonder how we ever got along with anything less now let's imagine what would have happened if the obvious course had been followed to talk from coast to coast it's all very simple all we need is a pair of instruments connected by two wires and a source of power to extend the range all we have to do is increase the size of the wire and increase the amount of power supply so by simple reasoning we could have transcontinental telephone service if the wires were thick enough if they were widely separated and adequately supplied with power of course the wire would have to be the thickness of a fire hose nevertheless two people could talk across the country this way of course if we were to attempt to duplicate the coast to coast channels of today through this simplified process oh let's forget it there isn't that much copper our power in all of America to keep your voice alive as it spans continents or leaps oceans Western electrics busy shops make millions of electron tubes to the Bell systems exacting specifications in many sizes and shapes each designed to do a particular kind of job in the best possible way these conventional tubes go into long-distance telephone circuits big babies like these are used in radio broadcasting heart of every modern radio station is the high-powered transmitting tube basically this tube is not far different from theforest Aon it has a filament a plate and a grid note how deafly this worker assembles the Lacy grid structure in this small Tube before being sealed in its envelope of glass and there are hundreds of others this big or this big all made to serve the country's needs in communication the war heat great responsibility on the shoulders of scientists and Engineers they designed scores of electron tubes expressly for the Army and Navy one the Western Electric 6 ak5 enable guns to aim more accurately these querly shaped magnetrons are significant examples of electronic science to which Bell Laboratories contributed greatly during the war they generate electrical Vibrations by the thousands of millions each second creating the pts for Radar Radar and radio underwater detectors and gun data computers these were the eyes the ears the predictors of our Victory and and when it came time to turn out the plowshares of Peace the great strides made by our Electronics Engineers were applied to better telephone service here is the a TRC 6 a radio telephone system developed and used during the war here as many as eight simultaneous telephone conversations were relayed from Station to Station from Island to Island modified and out of battle dress the am TRC 6 became the radio telephone relay system speeding from Hilltop to distant Hilltop the telephone messages and television programs of a message hungry world in the future of communications as in the past the telephone and its servant the electron tube is destined to play a mighty role for Global Peace and security can Thrive only in a world of universal understanding and to help fulfill this High ideal the latest and surely one of the greatest inventions of man is the electron Jew a bottle of magic

Channel: Tubes Valves

Views: 22,163

Keywords: electron, vacuum, tubes, valves, 101A, lee, deforest, edison, fleming, amplifier, triode, radio tubes, audio tubes, tubes valves, tube radio, audio, radio, tube, valve, amp, tubesvalves

Id: Fz4mUEEH6Rk

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 21 2011