14 Feb
2008
14 Feb
'08
9:28 a.m.
William Donzelli wrote:
Tubes back then barely worked. When they did work,
they barely
amplified. And you were lucky to get 50 hours out of them. A try
getting two that were vaguely similar electrically.
... although note that the person who raised the question placed no
constraints have been placed on reliability, speed, size, power consumption
etc. - merely whether it could be done.
Tube theory means virtually nothing to me (except that I know that the
earliest ones weren't exactly paragons of reliability :-) - but I suspect
that the answer to "could it be done" is a yes. The end result might not give
out sane data most of the time, would probably be as big as a house, and
likely wouldn't run for more than a day or two before everyone gave up in
disgust - but I suspect it'd be *possible*
And then try to find someone that actually knew how
the things worked.
That's probably covered by the "modern knowledge" part of the aforementioned
post, though (although it's not clear how far the rules can be bent in terms
of making a tube using modern knowledge but materials available in 1900 -
presumably a lot of what went into tubes of the 50s was known about in 1900,
but it was the knowledge of how to work with it that was lacking)
I have thought about how one would make a very early
digital machine
using tubes, and I have concluded that the very late 1920s is perhaps
a good line to draw in the sand.
See above though - depends how much of a factor the "modern knowledge" part
is. If people of 1900 knew how a tube worked, but just couldn't make a very
good one...
so the only real option for online storage is an
acoustic delay loop.
- or something mechanical for R/W store; remember nobody's put constraints on
speed (or anything else, really).
cheers
Jules