It was a blast growing up in the Jet Age. Sure, our parents saw rapid progress in their own lifetimes. They may have recalled a day when horse-drawn wagons were common on Main Street. They probably took rides on steam trains. And they could likely remember losing childhood friends to diseases that were quite curable or preventable by the time we came along.
But we had ELECTRONICS! Yes, electronics ran a tremendous percentage of the world that we grew up in.
And the electronics that our day-to-day life depended on so much were prone to frequent failure, thanks to components with very finite lifespans known as vacuum tubes.
Who knows, maybe embattled senator Ted Stevens, born in 1923, may have had the electronic versions somewhat in mind when he made his infamous "series of tubes" statement. Nah, probably not.
The transistor was perfected in 1947 by William Shockley. But it would be many years before it would completely replace the ubiquitous vacuum tube. In the meantime, radios, televisions, and stereo consoles were sold by the millions powered by electronic tubes.
Those tubes would act as sophisticated switches that would close when the current reached a certain voltage. When they worked their magic, it was possible to produce sound from electrical impulses. They generated heat, necessitating lots of ventilation holes on the devices in which they were installed. And they would glow in eerie shades of orange when they did their thing, as observed by myself peering through the small ventilation openings.
The light show would be accompanied by a peculiar aroma, caused by a combination of heat, ozone, and dust. It's impossible to describe, yet, if you smelled it, you would never forget it.
I found the combination of sensory stimulations very fascinating, so much so that I sought careers in the electrical and electronics fields before settling in as a computer geek almost ten years ago.
Dad wasn't nearly so taken by the show, of course. All he knew about an electronics-powered device was that when it quit, it QUIT. It was time to take the radio in, or call a repairman to the home in the case of a massive TV or stereo console.
Theoretically, it was possible to yank all of the tubes from the sick gadget and haul them down to Farrier's IGA, which had a tube tester.
The tube tester had a whole bunch of sockets, designed for every conceivable tube that could be found in the average consumer device. It had a dial that would pop into the green zone if the tube was okay, or stay in the dreaded yellow or red ranges if it was time to replace it.
The business hoped that you would purchase replacements for faulty tubes from them, of course, which is how they justified paying hundreds of dollars for a sophisticated tester that was free for public use.
If you found a bad tube, and the store had a replacement, you were back in business. That's assuming that you could match all of the tubes you yanked back with their original sockets and got them all seated correctly.
A kid would also offer silent prayers that the TV repairman would be able to diagnose the problem tube while he had the TV back removed in the house. If he did, another plea to God would be made that he would have the replacement tube in the truck.
If not, the household would have to do without TV for a week or a month, which, you'll recall, was several lifetimes for us when we were seven years old. It was even worse if he had to load the TV up and take it to the shop. We would stare mournfully at the empty spot in the living room, awaiting the interminable return of the one-eyed monster that we had grown to love so much.
Nowadays, the equivalent of the 1960's burnt-out-tube might be the occasional interruption in internet access. A recent ice storm isolated me from the rest of the world for a day or so, and it felt pretty lonely.
But one sad fact makes any modern-day outages more bearable than the ones we experienced in childhood. Time passes much, much faster now than it used to.
Comments (7)
Back when I was a college student and worked part-time in the Audiovisual Department (sorry, no pocket protector), my boss would occasionally check tubes for various devices. He would repair school equipment (sound system amplifiers), staff personal items (televisions and stereos), and his own ham radio gear. He would have to take the tubes to an independent electronics store with a tester similar to the one shown. He also had catalogs of tubes that listed acceptable replacements if the original was not available.
Posted by David S Paleg | February 2, 2009 6:46 AM
Posted on February 2, 2009 06:46
Boy, do I remember the smells from inside of the TV!
Posted by Steve Skinner | February 2, 2009 4:22 PM
Posted on February 2, 2009 16:22
As a professional musician, tubes were essential components of my amplifiers. The local electronics store had the mentioned tube tester but an experienced player knew when an amp’s power tubes were on the wane by the sound coming out. We just replaced them putting the old ones aside in case there was more life in them than the currently installed ones that were acting up on a gig. In the late 60’s these tubes, RCA 6L6, power tubes were pricey at about $5 a pop and there were 4 in a 100 Watt amplifier. After a tip from a friend, I represented myself as an Audio-visual dweeb from UVM and got them wholesale for $1.39 at a wholesale only to “professionals” outlet.
As a young lad I would tinker with tube radios and try to determine what the various functions the components and tubes performed by removing them and observing the results. More than once I experienced the aforementioned “peculiar aroma.” It was the smell of hot Bakelite which comprised the tube sockets and other components outgassing and in some cases charring (particularly after I accidently shorted out something or other.) That smell still haunts me to this day as I sometimes detect the redolence at home in an arcing light fixture or at work where components sometimes get fried. This distinctive smell is a valuable early warning that something is getting hot and its source needs to be identified before something undesirable occurs.
Posted by Burt | February 3, 2009 7:34 PM
Posted on February 3, 2009 19:34
I remember my Dad removing the TV back and replacing burnt out tubes on numerous occasions, and I also had a radio he made that operated using vacuum tubes.
I also remember that delicious aroma. In the case of my mother's stereo console, it was mixed with the smell of heated vinyl. I'll never forget that smell in a million years. Almost as good as the aroma of freshly baked bread. :D
Posted by Kitty | February 4, 2009 3:10 AM
Posted on February 4, 2009 03:10
I still have a tv that i watch daily that uses tubes. The picture is a little out of focus, but it is still working well. This is a 19 inch table model color tv made by Sears. I don't hae any replacemebt tubes, so I 'm out of luck when one goes bad. I'm ready for the digital transition; I have a converter box already hooked up and the picture is crisp.
Posted by David Holley | February 8, 2009 12:48 AM
Posted on February 8, 2009 00:48
Ahhh yes! Nothing better then vaccum tubes and such! I remember going to the drug store to see dad test the tubes for our appliances. I still use tubes today in some of my older model ham radios! As an amatuer operator, it is always fun to operate a transmitter that operates with tubes! The warm glow and the heat that is generated from using the radios! I still have tubes in my heathkit to generate wattage to transmit my signals around the world. I also remember the smell of the picture tubes in our old televisions. I grew up in the world of transistors, but tubes were very much apart of my younger days as a kid! Hang on to some of those old tubes from the 30s and 40s! Collector items!
Posted by Riversend | February 10, 2009 6:21 PM
Posted on February 10, 2009 18:21
Wow- not only do I remember tubes and that unique odor- but we also had a tube tester at home!
I don't know how we got it- my dad was an accountant!- but it was a fantastic toy for pretending you were in a space ship, what with all the dials and knobs! There was also a piece that you put on top of the tube (to make the circuit complete, I guess) that you could pretend was a microphone!
Posted by Harley Liebenson | March 7, 2009 9:27 PM
Posted on March 7, 2009 21:27