Very much On Topic: Integrated Vacuum Tubes

[Wai-Sun Chia]

On 4/21/05, William Donzelli <aw288 at osfn.org> wrote:
> Certainly, multifunction tubes were around - the first ones were the dual
> diodes and rectifiers of the 1920s, then later twin triodes, extra diodes,
> and yes, to the ultimate Compactrons.

And pray tell what are Compactrons?

> 
> Integrating the functions, like in the Loewe tubes, never caught on. In
> the US, a few directly coupled triodes were produced (6N6G being the most
> common), and some of the eye tubes had a built in triode as a driver, but
> for the most part, each function was pinned out individually. The most
> advanced integrated tube was probably the VT-158 Zahl tube - a 600 MHz
> pulse oscillator in a bulb. It was a dead end.
> 

Hmmmm...interesting..
So in the heydays of the tube/valve,  they trend towards
generalization of functions (anybody can say TTL?), and shy away from
multifunction/integrated circuits.

It is so ironic that the trend is reversed with the coming of
transistors->IC->ASIC..

So some questions to throw to the tube collectors:
- What was/is the smallest tube? purpose? 
- What was/is the most integrated tube? purpose?

/ws