Look at this lovely old book that I bought! It’s an old tube radio manual, and it’s full of great stuff. The illustrations are perfectly old-fashioned and painstakingly hand-drawn. I like it. It bears a lot of similarity to the Radio Handbook that I also own. In fact, I bought both of them from Eliot’s Bookshop here in Toronto. There always seems to be a bounty of interesting old engineering books on their shelves (well, one of their shelves).
It’s a shame that vacuum tubes barely get mentioned in the modern electrical engineering curriculum. An understanding of their operation provides insight into how transistors work, not to mention an intuitive grasp of amplification and certain electromagnetic principles. Also, they’re just cool. They look fascinating and weird. They draw people in. It seems to me that they’re an obvious tool for getting students excited about electronics and electromagnetism.
Anyways, check it out:
Great, right?