24 Jul
2005
24 Jul
'05
1:28 p.m.
Leakage and shorts went down dramatically in the
1950s, when
the tube makers started making the tubes in (mostly) clean
room environments, with better automation. Subminis, the
tubes that will-not-die, were made in real clean rooms.
I do not know of any non-military computer system that used subminis.
I used to have a handful of those submini tubes but I can't find one now. If
anybody has a spare, even a dead one, that they could send us it would be
nice to have one on display. Right now the only tube era parts we have are a
core plane and an IBM tube circuit with a bunch of miniature tubes - mostly
9 pin. The rectifier had been replaced at some point with a solid state
component that plugged in a 9-pin socket.
Gil
A. G. (Gil) Carrick, Director
The Museum at CSE
University of Texas at Arlington
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
Box 19015, 471 S Cooper Street
Arlington, TX 76019
817-272-3620
http://www.cse.uta.edu/TheMuseum at CSE/
William Donzelli
aw288 at osfn.org