Way back in the salad days of digital computing (the 1940s and '50s), computers were made of vacuum tubes -- big, hot, clunky devices that, when you got right down to it, were essentially glorified ...

When most people think about vacuum tubes, they picture big glass bottles glowing inside antique radios or early computers.

A vacuum tube, known as the first electronic device, is used to switch, amplify, or commutate electric signals. In the past, vacuum tubes functioned as a main part of a diverse range of electronic ...

A vacuum tube is just that: a glass tube surrounding a vacuum (an area from which all gases have been removed). What makes it interesting is that when electrical contacts are put on the ends, you can ...

Prior to Bell Labs’ first working transistor in 1947, which ushered in the advent of semiconductor technology and the computer age, every long-distance telephone call, radio and television broadcast, ...

75 years ago this month, research scientists working at Bell Labs first created, then unveiled to the world a new device—the point contact transistor. Some call it the greatest invention of the 20th ...