[BULK] - Re: [TowerTalk] Vacuum tube 100 years old today

[Alan C. Zack]

One of the projects I worked on at the former Rockwell Intl (now part 
of Boeing) was the MX Missile project.  Down the hall from us was the 
Minuteman labs.  Going to the Minuteman Labs was like going to a 
museum.  The Minuteman guidance system used peanut tubes in it's 
circuitry.

Jim Miller wrote:

> You might be right.  Everything I saw was solid state but there may have
> been something in there that was tube.  It was the Minuteman system that we
> were installing.
> 
> 73, de Jim KG0KP
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Steve Katz" <stevek at jmr.com>
> To: "'Jim Miller'" <JimMiller at STL-Online.Net>; <towertalk at contesting.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2004 3:30 PM
> Subject: RE: [BULK] - Re: [TowerTalk] Vacuum tube 100 years old today
> 
> 
> 
>>>I was in missile class in the Air Force in 1963 and the lab and course
> 
> was
> 
>>>entirely in tubes even though the missile was entirely in transistors.
>>>The
>>>adaptation was very short (minutes, maybe and hour) and said that
>>>transistors worked like tubes except at lower voltages and power levels.
>>>That was all there was to transistors !!!  Not bad really for a class
> 
> that
> 
>>>hadn't been rewritten yet (and that may have been all the instructor
> 
> knew
> 
>>>at
>>>that time).
>>>
>>>73, de Jim KG0KP
>>
>>[Steve Katz]  I'll bet the missle wasn't "all transistors" in 1963.
>>The guidance and targeting systems used high voltage microwave tubes
>>throughout the 1970s, including SAMs and AAMs.  Of course, a lot of those
>>late 1950s designs didn't actually reach production levels until the
>>seventies (no kidding).  We were building (Army) Hawks designed in '63 at
>>Raytheon/Martin (forebody/aftbody) in 1978; the Patriot didn't go into
> 
> full
> 
>>production until after that, and its acquisition system still used
>>tubes...ditto the Sidewinder, Sparrow, etc.  -WB2WIK/6

-- 
__________________________________________________________________________ 

Alan Zack
Amateur Radio Station K7ACZ
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Quality Engineer, The Boeing Company, Retired
Aviation Chief Warrant Officer, U.S. Coast Guard, Retired
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