Collaborate Disseminate
Magic Eye tubes were popular as tuning guides on old-school radio gear. However, the tubes, the 6U5 model in particular, have become rare and remarkably hard to come by of …read more Continue reading A Digital Replacement For Your Magic Eye
While it’s currently the start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere, it will inevitably get cold again. If you’re looking for a unique way of heating your workshop this year, …read more Continue reading 8-Bits and 1,120 Triodes
It’s the future. We should have weird glowy lights everywhere, all over our homes, cars, and businesses. In the automotive world, luxury automakers are doing their part with LED ambient …read more Continue reading DIY Tube Lights Look Amazing For Just $50 A Piece
Over the years, there have been several memory and display technologies that served a particular niche for a while, only to be replaced and forgotten when a more suitable technology …read more Continue reading Dekatron Clock Tells the Time, Sans Semiconductors
Typically, if you want to convert solar energy into electrical energy, you use either photovoltaic (PV) cells, or you use the sunlight to create steam to turn a turbine. Both …read more Continue reading Hackaday Prize 2022: Glass Tube Solar Thermionic Converters
Before you could just put a drum machine app on your phone, or fire up Garage Band, there were breakthroughs like the Roland 808 drum machine. But that’s not where …read more Continue reading Antique Beat Box Showcases 1950’s Engineering Prowess
As those of us who work in electronics are grappling with a semiconductor shortage making common devices unobtainable and less common ones very expensive, it’s worth noting that there’s another …read more Continue reading Semiconductor Shortage? Never Mind That, There’s A Vacuum Shortage!
In 2021 all our electronics are solid state, in that they exclusively use semiconductor devices as their active components. Some of us may experiment with vacuum tubes, but only for …read more Continue reading Retrotechtacular: Nuvistor, Vacuum’s Last Gasp
Vacuum tubes ruled electronics for several decades and while you might think of them as simple devices analogous to a transistor or FET, there were many special types. We’re all familiar with nixie tubes that act as numeric displays, and …read more
For most of us, electronic technology comes in the form of solid state devices. Transistors, integrated circuits, microcontrollers. But for the first sixty years or so of the field existing, these devices either hadn’t been invented yet or were at too early a stage in their development to be either …read more