14 Feb
2008
14 Feb
'08
3:18 p.m.
Its not to say that *no* electronic components of any
variety were
being produced with specific quality and reliability standards, its the
components that were being used to fabricate Whirlwind. In
particular, things like core memory were invented for Whirlwind, so
there was no established quality/reliability metric.
For core, yes, but not for the tubes. Whirlwind did not use any
groundbreaking new types.
MIT/Whirlwind/SAGE didn't do this for things like
wires, resistors,
inductors, etc., but for the more advanced components that were newly
invented. I know they did it for core memory, and I believe there
were also some tubes mentioned.
Most of the really hard core study of tube reliability happened in the
1930s and World War 2.
--
Will