A question for speakers of the original English

[CatalinaWOW]

Before LCDs took over did you guys use CRVs for displays?  Us Yanks used CRTs but we called all of our thermionic devices tubes. 

[IanB]

CRT of course.

A "valve" regulates the flow of electricity. Since a display device does not regulate the flow of electricity there is no reason to call it a valve 

[Zero999]

Yes, the reason the Brits called a thermionic tube a valve is because it controls the flow of electric current. The yanks just abbreviated it to tube.

[nctnico]

CRT of course.

A "valve" regulates the flow of electricity. Since a display device does not regulate the flow of electricity there is no reason to call it a valve 

As a matter of fact a CRT regulates the flow of electrons to the screen.

[IanB]

As a matter of fact a CRT regulates the flow of electrons to the screen.

Maybe so, but that is not its primary purpose in an electric circuit.

[CatalinaWOW]

CRT of course.

A "valve" regulates the flow of electricity. Since a display device does not regulate the flow of electricity there is no reason to call it a valve 

So I guess "magic eyes"  and "nixies" are tubes since they also don't regulate external flows of electricity.  And given the British reason for naming valves, why transistor?  They are just solid state valves.  As are FETs.

On our side, I think tube was short for vacuum tube.  I don't know that thermionic tube was ever used.  Either way we settled on a physical description while British English chose functional.  Until both abandoned both approaches at the solid state era.  Funny how languages work. Or don't.

[IanB]

The first transistor radios in Britain often had "Solid State" written on them for marketing purposes. So arguably they did contain "solid state valves".

(I wish I had kept the old ones I had as a child, complete with germanium transistors.)

[james_s]

The term "valve" is actually more descriptive than "tube" although it sounded funny for a while. An engineer friend of mine is British and we've talked about all this stuff so much that we both tend to use and mix the US and UK terms interchangeably. It gets even more confusing with words that exist in both dialects but have different meaning. Paraffin for example, in the UK is what Americans call kerosene, but in the US we have paraffin but it's synthetic candle wax. Most of the words are the same but in many ways it really is a different language.

[Macbeth]

In the 1970's UK, all those strange rocket ship devices with fascinating grids and stuff and all those pins at the bottom that I used to play with in the back garden from an old TV set were commonly known as "valves". They would often blow (heater coil usually) and a TV "service engineer" (who it seems would be a criminal in Oregon) could be called out.

But most men of the household in the day would just see the "valve" without a light underneath and go and take it to a shop and replace with another, much like fuses. They were socketed of course. I got to play with the old worn out valves as toys. (I dread to think how that would play with social services today)

Yes, they were always known as "valves" in common parlance. The picture tube or CRT was NOT known as a valve but a "telly screen"

[IanB]

in the US we have paraffin but it's synthetic candle wax

...which in the UK is "paraffin wax". Maybe you guys just shortened it to "paraffin"?

[james_s]

in the US we have paraffin but it's synthetic candle wax

...which in the UK is "paraffin wax". Maybe you guys just shortened it to "paraffin"?

Perhaps so, but if you mention "paraffin" to pretty much any American they'll think you're talking about wax. We have "lamp oil" too which many people call kerosene even though I think it's technically liquid paraffin. Oil lamps are pretty much universally referred to as "kerosene lamps".

[Brumby]

Mention "paraffin" in Australia and you'll more commonly find the interpretation will be for the wax - unless you have an audience that has a strong link to British culture.

The flammable liquid is called kerosene.

[Ampera]

How about we all stop speaking english and see how a more civilized and regulated country like Germany does it.

Oh,

oh.

Right, well how about, er, uh....

Can't we just communicate by grunting? there's a lot less confusion that way.

[Neilm]

How about we all stop speaking english and see how a more civilized and regulated country like Germany does it.

Face it - we are all making a series of noises developed so one monkey could tell another monkey where the ripe fruit was...

[CatalinaWOW]

How about we all stop speaking english and see how a more civilized and regulated country like Germany does it.

Face it - we are all making a series of noises developed so one monkey could tell another monkey where the ripe fruit was...

But since the languages in question started in northern Europe the grunts are steeped in frustration that the fruit is NEVER ripe.

[Monkeh]

How about we all stop speaking english

How about you lot start?

[Brumby]

[tooki]

How about we all stop speaking english and see how a more civilized and regulated country like Germany does it.

Face it - we are all making a series of noises developed so one monkey could tell another monkey where the ripe fruit was...

But since the languages in question started in northern Europe the grunts are steeped in frustration that the fruit is NEVER ripe.

I literally LOLed at this. It's true!

(For example, when I moved from USA to Switzerland, something that puzzled me was onions: in USA, big onions are the cheapest by weight, and you pay more for little ones. In Switzerland it's the opposite. For dicing it makes no difference, but if you want big onion rings, it's an issue. I finally found out the reason when I asked a farmer: in Switzerland the growing season is short, so to get big onions, you have to start them as seedlings in a greenhouse in the winter and then transplant them to the fields. Small onions, you just plant seeds in spring and let them do their thing!)

Speaking of grunts, the acid test for Swiss German pronunciation is the guttural "ch" sound: it's supposed to sound like you're trying to dislodge something from your throat!