History of Wireless: Vacuum Tubes

Tubes to Transistors

Vacuum tubes were critical to the early development and commercialization of radio, television, radar, sound reproduction, telephones, computers, and industrial process control.

Over time, vacuum tubes were replaced in most applications by solid state transistors which are smaller, more efficient, and more reliable. Transistors were originally individual devices but today are far more commonly found within semiconductors and microprocessors. As result of “Moore’s Law,” the number of transistors in a single chip has gone from thousands to more than a billion in fewer than 50 years.

Radio Vacuum Tubes