It is 1959, you are an EE, confused and undecided whether to….

[schmitt trigger]

…use the familiar Vacuum Tube technology or that pesky newcomer the Transistor, for your new product.

No worries, mate! The Electron Tube information Council has printed a dandy new brochure to clarify your doubts. After reading it, you’ll certainly be convinced to use the….the…. What was the name of that Council, again?
Anyways, have yourself a wonderful read: https://www.rcaselectron.com/TNT.html

Of course, any seasoned and intelligent engineer would advocate a hybrid. Using transistors where it made the most technical sense, and tubes everywhere else. Hundreds of successful products were designed this manner, well into the late 1960s and probably early 1970s.

I find amusing that a year earlier, Jack Kilby had even demonstrated the NEXT generation of electronics.

(*) Note, although the website claims 1959, the brochure’s credits mentioned the publishing date as 1960.

[jzx]

I have seen even a TV set with tubes  (not only the CRT), transistors, ICs and varicaps ... No leds still, it had incandescent lamps.

[soldar]

I have seen even a TV set with tubes  (not only the CRT), transistors, ICs and varicaps ... No leds still, it had incandescent lamps.

Seen them?  I made them! Yes, I am that old.

Of course low voltage signal processing parts were transistorized first while high voltage parts retained tubes.

I worked in the Telefunken factory in Madrid and we made TVs. Recently I tried to pinpoint the exact location and had a very hard time because the area has changed so much. What used to be industrial is now residential and commercial. Finally I could determine that what used to be the Telefunken factory in Madrid is now a shopping mall called Madrid Rio.

[pcprogrammer]

Seen them?  I made them! Yes, I am that old.

Repaired them, so less old. 

[soldar]

…use the familiar Vacuum Tube technology or that pesky newcomer the Transistor, for your new product.

Trying to discredit new technology is, most times, a losing game.

I remember TV manufacturer Emerson had ads trying to discredit PCBs. "Our TVs are carefully wired and assembled by hand, wire by wire, with great care..." While Japanese manufacturers went with the newest technologies.

Emerson soon disappeared.

We had an Emerson TV. The next one was Japanese.

[globoy]

That was a fun read.  Thanks ST. 

How far did tube technology progress in its competition with transistors?  I seem to remember reading somewhere about some pretty small and low power tubes.

[schmitt trigger]

RCA even produced a “transistor killer”, the Nuvistor ultra compact tube.
I had a Sansui stereo receiver where the FM tuner section was made with Nuvistors.

General Electric also responded with the “Compactron” tubes which had three different devices within the same glass envelope.

[globoy]

RCA even produced a “transistor killer”, the Nuvistor ultra compact tube.

I guess the Nuvistor was some of the technology that document in your link was talking about that was coming for tubes with its ceramic spacers.  This article http://www.r-type.org/articles/art-150.htm mentions one taking 135 mA @ 6.2V for the heater.  I guess that was much lower than traditional tubes but still seems a little crazy today.

And the wikipedia article about the Compactron mentions they were making TVs in the 1970s that had tubes, transistors and ICs in them at the same time!

So I guess the tube had a reasonably graceful fall from prominence. 

[soldar]

Tubes which had two or three devices in the same tube were relatively common. Two triodes, ecc84 triode-pentode pcl82, pcl84,ecl82, ech84, echXX

ECH81 was triode heptode used as rf amplifier in heterodyne radio receivers and the triode section used for the local oscillator.

I still have my manuals of the time

Also, I started out in ham radio with tubes. When I started using transistors they were expensive and I blew too many. Tubes were much more forgiving.

[coppice]

I have seen even a TV set with tubes  (not only the CRT), transistors, ICs and varicaps ... No leds still, it had incandescent lamps.

In 1960 the only semiconductors you would find in a TV were some diodes. In 1968 Thorn launched the first colour TVs where the only thermionic device was the CRT. They had dealt with the EHT, using a voltage tripler and 3 diodes that each handled about 7kV each. They had high voltage (about 1600V) transistors to deal with the line scan. They had some simple ICs to help with the signal processing. They even had a class D audio amp. That was quite a decade of change.

[floobydust]

In the repair shop, I remember Philips colour TV sets circa mid 1970's were pretty strange - they had both IC's and vacuum tubes in them. Mostly horizontal output, HV damper diode and vertical output as I recall.
Power transistors were late or too expensive I guess.

[coppice]

Tubes which had two or three devices in the same tube were relatively common. Two triodes, ecc84 triode-pentode pcl82, pcl84,ecl82, ech84, echXX

ECH81 was triode heptode used as rf amplifier in heterodyne radio receivers and the triode section used for the local oscillator.

I still have my manuals of the time

Also, I started out in ham radio with tubes. When I started using transistors they were expensive and I blew too many. Tubes were much more forgiving.

By the time the tube industry started to wind down pretty much the only consumer tubes with a single device inside were power amps and low noise front ends. Even the lower rated power amp tubes included a triode for the pre-amp.

[pcprogrammer]

TV's went through a whole series of changes from tube through transistor to complete integrated circuits, becoming less and less repairable on single component level. For me it was occasional repairs, but a friend of mine did it as a side business. His house was filled with TV's, but eventually he gave up on it as it became less and less profitable.

[coppice]

In the repair shop, I remember Philips colour TV sets circa mid 1970's were pretty strange - they had both IC's and vacuum tubes in them. Mostly horizontal output, HV damper diode and vertical output as I recall.
Power transistors were late or too expensive I guess.

I think B&O were the last to make hybrid TVs, in the early 70s. They under-ran their tubes, so they typically lasted for the entire life of the TVs. Having less of a reliability problem than most makers, they had less of an incentive to rapidly strip out all the tubes. Most makers were going through a hybrid phase by the mid 60s. Philips had an all semiconductor chassis, the G8, in 1969, and refinements of that were made for several years, with more and more transistors being replaced by ICs.

[pcprogrammer]

I remember some having modules for the specific functions and it became a swapping of modules game to repair them. Probably beyond the vacuum tube already, but pre integrated circuit. Can't remember makers and models but suspect Philips ones. We are talking 35-45 years ago, so memory faded.

[coppice]

I remember some having modules for the specific functions and it became a swapping of modules game to repair them. Probably beyond the vacuum tube already, but pre integrated circuit. Can't remember makers and models but suspect Philips ones. We are talking 35-45 years ago, so memory faded.

In the UK and some other countries the TV business in the 60s was largely a rental business. People didn't want to buy, because the poor reliability of TVs meant they wanted regular easily accessible support. That lead to the early semiconductor TVs being made modular, so the guy you called out could generally swap a module quickly, and take the failed one back to base for repair in a workshop. As technology progressed, the major reliability problem became the board to board interconnects. The Japanese were not burdened by a legacy business. They made TVs a bit harder to fix, but a lot more reliable, using only one or two large PCBs. When people caught on to this, they bought TVs in large numbers, and people like Thorn and Philips, with large rental businesses, faired very poorly.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Using transistors wasn't a slam-dunk. Until Fairchild invented the planar transistor, transistors were not very reliable and subject to contamination related problems that would render them inoperable (planar transistors use a layer of SiO2 to passivate the PN junctions--mesa transistors, the forerunners of planar transistors, didn't have this protection).

Very early in the transistor era germanium was used rather than silicon. Germanium transistors don't work at temperatures above about 65C. There was a famous demonstration by Texas Instruments in 1954 at an IRE convention where a germanium transistor in the audio output circuit of a phonograph was immersed in 65C hot oil. The sound from the speaker stopped. When the germanium transistor was replaced with a silicon transistor, the sound continued without pause when the Si transistor was immersed in the hot oil.

By the early 1960s most of the problems with transistors had been solved, and their use in consumer products took off. That wasn't the case as late as 1959, however.

[jitter]

…use the familiar Vacuum Tube technology or that pesky newcomer the Transistor, for your new product.

No worries, mate! The Electron Tube information Council has printed a dandy new brochure to clarify your doubts. After reading it, you’ll certainly be convinced to use the….the…. What was the name of that Council, again?
Anyways, have yourself a wonderful read: https://www.rcaselectron.com/TNT.html

Of course, any seasoned and intelligent engineer would advocate a hybrid. Using transistors where it made the most technical sense, and tubes everywhere else. Hundreds of successful products were designed this manner, well into the late 1960s and probably early 1970s.

I find amusing that a year earlier, Jack Kilby had even demonstrated the NEXT generation of electronics.

(*) Note, although the website claims 1959, the brochure’s credits mentioned the publishing date as 1960.

I just had to chuckle when I saw GE's slogan at the end of the ad: "Progress Is Our Most Important Product"...
Less than a decade later, some of the components used in the Apollo guidance computers look a lot like SMD to me. "Flatpack electronics" it was called back then.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Less than a decade later, some of the components used in the Apollo guidance computers look a lot like SMD to me. "Flatpack electronics" it was called back then.

Yes, they were three-input NOR gate ICs packaged as "Flatpacks". There were two gates per package. Unlike common practice today, these ICs were welded to the circuit boards rather than soldered.

[soldar]

The selenium rectifier deserves to be remembered if only for its stinky smell.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selenium_rectifier

[coppice]

Yes, they were three-input NOR gate ICs packaged as "Flatpacks". There were two gates per package. Unlike common practice today, these ICs were welded to the circuit boards rather than soldered.

It varied. flatpaks were used in various ways. The leads stuck straight out, and were quite hard to bend. Quite a few people made jigs to form those legs to something more like a QFP with long legs, and soldered them down to a PCB. I think welding was mostly used to tolerate the high physical stresses in missiles.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Yes, they were three-input NOR gate ICs packaged as "Flatpacks". There were two gates per package. Unlike common practice today, these ICs were welded to the circuit boards rather than soldered.

It varied. flatpaks were used in various ways. The leads stuck straight out, and were quite hard to bend. Quite a few people made jigs to form those legs to something more like a QFP with long legs, and soldered them down to a PCB. I think welding was mostly used to tolerate the high physical stresses in missiles.

Here's what a PCB in the Apollo AGC looked like:

[Sal Ammoniac]

Another advantage of tubes in consumer equipment like radios and TVs was that they were more consumer-serviceable. I'm a child of the 1960s and I remember that when our TV stopped working my Dad didn't take it to a shop or call a repairman. He took the back off the set, removed the tubes, and went down to the local drugstore, which had a tube tester. Replacing the tubes that showed as "bad" on the tube tester usually fixed the problem. He'd only take the TV to a shop if replacing tube(s) didn't work (and that wasn't very often).

[floobydust]

TI still showing flatpacks for TL072, TL074 pg. 58.
What's the problem?

EE's like to use the latest and greatest parts - but this means they're top price and not always a good, reliable part. Finding that out in production is your basic nightmare.

[rstofer]

Apple claims their new M3 CPU contains around a 25 billion transistors.  That would be a lot of heater current!