How about some of the more antique and exotics, such as "Crookes tube" or
"Geissler tube"?
How about the "Electron Ray Tube" aka "Tuning Eye Tube" (6E5, EM81,
etc.)?
Cheers,
Chuck
On 6/18/2006 at 10:04 PM ard at p850ug1.demon.co.uk wrote:
(Point of
curiosity: In British English, when is a tube a valve? You
fellows don't talk about "Cathode Ray Valves" do you? Is a
photomultiplier
No, but there are many stories of uninformed customers telling the TV
enginere that the fault is the 'picture valve' :-)
tube a "valve"? How about a TWT?)
Hmmm. Good question. I am not sure of all cases, but we (the UK) would
talk about :
Diode valve, triode valve, tetrode valve, pentode valve, etc (up to
nonode valve), and things like 'frequency changer valve' (which is, I
think, what you'd call a 'converter tube').
But : Cathode ray tube, photomulitiplier tube, vidicon tube (and image
orthicon, iconoscope, if you go back that far), voltage stabiliser tube
(as in the gas-filled cold-cathode diode that started this thread :-)),
travelling wave tube, dekatron tube, nixie tube, trochotron tube, trigger
tube, etc
I think klystrons and magnetrons are more commonly 'valves' over here,
but 'tube' wouldn't sound too odd either.
Other terms change too. What you'd call a 'damper tube' in a TV
horizontal output stage, we'd call a 'booster diode (valve)' in a 'line
output stage'.
If anyone wants to know what I'd call a specific device, just ask.
-tony