DIY Vacuum Tubes
Jake von Slatt — Wed, 10/15/2008 - 16:27

If you were popped out of the timestream and found yourself suddenly in the distant past, how much of our modern technology could you re-create? I've often thought that I could climb back to the vacuum tube era of the 1920s or so.
Author H. P. Friedrichs has realized this thought experiment and gone a step further by re-creating the transistor as well. You can read detailed descriptions of these adventures in technology in his book Instruments of Amplification.
Instruments of Amplification, written and illustrated by H. P. Friedrichs, is jam-packed with nearly 300 pages of history, science background, basic theory, and hard-to-find hands-on details pertaining to the construction of an amazing array of homebrew amplifying devices.
Rooted in the same "build-it-from-scratch" philosophy that made his first book, The Voice of the Crystal, a success, Instruments of Amplification reduces complex devices to their essential elements and then shows how they can be constructed from commonly available materials.
Instruments of Amplification is available from my favourite bookseller, Lindsay Books.
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If you've read the "Papa Schimmelhorn" stories...
Technogeek — Fri, 02/06/2009 - 01:34... about an inventor who's a subconscious genius (and pluperfect Dirty Old Man), you may remember an episode in which, amongst other alarums and excursions, we're treated to the concept of vacuum tubes with gears in them.
Looking at the tube featured above, it occurs to me that there is plenty of space in there for mechanical components alongside the electronic ones.
I wonder... Could someone manage to build something in which tube function and mechanical function were actually interlinked in some almost-reasonable way. Impractical, sure, but... You'd probably need to use jewel bearings, or maybe a silicon microsphere lube, since you wouldn't want to use anything that could evaporate inside the vacuum jar...
Hey, I can dream with the best of 'em. Problem is, I already have too many hobbies queued up demanding attention; I'm not up for tackling another longer-term precision task.
You'd have to find away to
Jake von Slatt — Fri, 02/06/2009 - 12:22You'd have to find away to avoid vacuum diffusion welding too, Hmmm . . . .