11-16-2018, 12:13 AM
I have a few Nuvistors kicking around, I'm not sure where they came from but I think they were NOS, they are RCA brand, have metal envelopes, and were designed to plug into sockets, they have a collar around the base to protect the pins, and probably for shielding. 35Z5 is right, they were used primarily in TV tuners, probably because they were considered more reliable then the Germanium transistors of the day in high frequency circuits, at least in colour sets.
As I have long since discovered vacuum tubes didn't simply disappear because pocket transistor radios hit the market, there were a lot of limits to the technology early on that precluded their use, and so vacuum tube development carried on, Nuvistors, Compactrons, space charge tubes. Then it became a matter of cost, tubes were cheap for almost all applications, especially when you take TV power supply construction into account, you could build a TV that was almost all transistorized in the early 60s, such as the Philco Safaris, but those cost as much as a top end B&W console set. There were many all tube stereos on the market until the mid 60s, and tubes survived in AC operated series string radios right up until 1968-69, some were hybrids with transistors in the FM tuner.
The Soviet versions are interesting, I heard from an uncle who visited Vladivostok back in the 1990s who was apparently surprised at the fact, not only that they used tubes, but that they used such small ones in their aircraft electronics. I did not know that they were reverse engineered from Nuvistors however, but given the history of the Soviet electronics industry I don't find that surprising since they were also one of the second or third countries to adopt octal based metal tubes.
Regards
Arran
As I have long since discovered vacuum tubes didn't simply disappear because pocket transistor radios hit the market, there were a lot of limits to the technology early on that precluded their use, and so vacuum tube development carried on, Nuvistors, Compactrons, space charge tubes. Then it became a matter of cost, tubes were cheap for almost all applications, especially when you take TV power supply construction into account, you could build a TV that was almost all transistorized in the early 60s, such as the Philco Safaris, but those cost as much as a top end B&W console set. There were many all tube stereos on the market until the mid 60s, and tubes survived in AC operated series string radios right up until 1968-69, some were hybrids with transistors in the FM tuner.
The Soviet versions are interesting, I heard from an uncle who visited Vladivostok back in the 1990s who was apparently surprised at the fact, not only that they used tubes, but that they used such small ones in their aircraft electronics. I did not know that they were reverse engineered from Nuvistors however, but given the history of the Soviet electronics industry I don't find that surprising since they were also one of the second or third countries to adopt octal based metal tubes.
Regards
Arran
