[TowerTalk] Vacuum tube 100 years old today

[Don K5AQ]

My first job out of college was with Bell Labs in Whippany, NJ designing a 
solid state (transistorized!) guidance system for the NIKE guided missile.

The first circuit I worked on was a one-shot using a point contact 
transistor which loved to oscillate since it was basically unstable.

One day we got a new-fangled junction transistor which I managed to blow 
into two pieces(it had a plastic case) by putting a lantern battery in the 
proper direction across the emitter-base diode. Live and learn.

Sure was a long time ago (1953) and by the time I retired from Texas 
Instruments in 1995, we were into 16Meg DRAMs. Time does indeed fly when you 
are in an industry like that.

73  Don  K5AQ