Did you know that the first computers, radios, telephones, and amplifiers all relied on vacuum tubes to work? That’s right… tubes helped men walk on the moon, they were in every television and every radio. In the old days, the largest tech companies in the world like RCA, Telefunken, and GE competed to make the best tubes possible. Now, no one knows what the fuzz a vacuum tube is.
So what happened? Where did all the tubes go? Well, between 1948 and 1960, new technology was being developed, and it would change everything… Enter the transistor. The hero of modern technology, and villain to valves everywhere.