The last several decades of technological progress have, in large part, been about finding more and more things we can do with semiconductors and the technology for producing them.
Vacuum tubes have another specific modern use: in amplifiers, where their non-linear behavior at higher temperatures can create everything from a "warm" sound (with added harmonics) to the "distorted" sound associated with electric guitars. Musicians pay extra for vacuum-tube amplifiers. Even technologies that fall out of widespread use can still have artistic uses or even become luxury products.
Ukrainians recently displayed fragments of the Russian "Oreshnik" MRBM, and mocked the use of "ancient technology" in the form of vacuum tubes.
The laughted died down when the explanation that vacuum tubes are used for their resistance to the EMP effects expected of nuclear-tipped interceptor missiles was revealed.
Vacuum tubes have another specific modern use: in amplifiers, where their non-linear behavior at higher temperatures can create everything from a "warm" sound (with added harmonics) to the "distorted" sound associated with electric guitars. Musicians pay extra for vacuum-tube amplifiers. Even technologies that fall out of widespread use can still have artistic uses or even become luxury products.
I never would have known this. That's such a creative use!
Small correction:
> by changing the current in the metallic grid
Umm, no. The voltage of the grid, relative to the cathode, blocks the electrons (or not).
The small(ish) current from the cathode to the grid the does flow when the tube conducts is secondary.
Thanks, fixed.
I wrote a paper on this in college, perhaps I will find it again one day! Always a fan of the triode, and it's simpler nonlinear behavior.
Ukrainians recently displayed fragments of the Russian "Oreshnik" MRBM, and mocked the use of "ancient technology" in the form of vacuum tubes.
The laughted died down when the explanation that vacuum tubes are used for their resistance to the EMP effects expected of nuclear-tipped interceptor missiles was revealed.