What is the best electronics invention ever made?

[telectrix]

agreed. at least with a valve, it's got a nice little red glow from the heaters. and if they play up, a gentle tap with a screwdriver handle works wonders.

 

[johnboy6083]

Valves! We're sparks for gods sake, not plumbers or pipefitters!
You lot disappoint me!
;-)


PS. What is a valve??

 

[La Poste]

Well I am no expert but wasn't the first computer made with valves?

Colossus computer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My favourite quote:

Throughout this period the Colossus remained secret, long after any of its technical details were of any importance. This was due to the UK's intelligence agencies use of Enigma-like machines which they promoted and sold to other governments, and then broke the codes using a variety of methods. Had the knowledge of the codebreaking machines been widely known, no one would have accepted these machines; rather, they would have developed their own methods for encryption, methods that the UK services might not have been able to break.

So we sold foreign governments encoding machines with out telling them we were the only government capable of breaking the codes of the machines we sold them, good business.

A bit like selling the Libyans an aircraft that only we know how to shoot down, I'm sure the Yanks do this sort of thing all the time.

I will have to do some reading but I think valves were the fore runner of the transistor.

I understand transistors but don't know much about valves.

 

[telectrix]

simplest valve is a diode valve. a + voltage is applied to the anode and a - voltage to the cathode. to make it work, it has to be warm, so has a heater incorporated, generally supplied with around 6v. when conducting, electrons flow from cathode to anode, thus creating a one way d.c. current. a triode is slightly more complex, utilising a third electrode called a grid, a voltage is applied to the grid to drag electrons from the cathode to the anode, thus acting similarly to a transistor ( grid = base ). can't you tell i've got nothing better to do at the moment.

 

[Specialist]

Portable DSO, but that would'nt have been possible without the Silicon chip.

 

[telectrix]

but, without the silicon chip, we wouldn't have computers, mobile phones, etc. , so we could be able to get on with some work instead of messing about on the damn things.

 

[SirKit Breaker]

Valves! We're sparks for gods sake, not plumbers or pipefitters!
You lot disappoint me!
;-)


PS. What is a valve??

WHAT you dont know what a valve is?:laugh3: Ask your granny, i bet her telly took ages to warm up in the 70's. Tellys were full of them.

 

[Engineer54]

Valve came first! And they're pretty!

A typical computer motherboard chip or processor has over a million transistors incorporated within it, ...i'd like to see you jam that many valves into a chip..lol!! Transistors are the biggest kiddo on the block, and is recognised as the most important invention of our age!! check it out for yourselves!! lol!!

 

[topquark]

Intel's core i7 has around 750 million!

 

[Engineer54]

Intel's core i7 has around 750 million!

There you go!!..... i only knew it was a huge number!! The mind has to boggle at those sort of numbers, ....So much for the value of the old valves! lol

But ... good valves in a high end amplifier Stereo system can't be beaten for there smoothness.

 

[Rauer]

The flux capacitor!!!!

 

[trev]

How about the guitar pick up?
It's only a very small generator but without it there would have been no Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy page, Eddie Van Halen, Joe Satriani, etc etc etc the list could be endless

 

[trev]

Also not an electronic device

 

[trev]

I'd best shut up, too much gin tonight
My apologies ladies and gentlemen

 

[bodders22]

Got to be the zx81 my first computer, showing my age now ! imagine youngsters a whole 16kb ram (obviously with the ram pack only 1 without it!):wheelchair::wheelchair: