Winged Messenger of Radio

Thermionic Emissions

Dedicated to the Preservation of Vintage
Tube-Era Radios and Radio-Related Equipment

Welcome to Thermionic Emissions

The Strange Website Name

First an explanation, for the uninitiated, of the website name. The term "thermionic emissions", refers to the manner in which vacuum tube-type electronic devices manipulate electron flow to achieve a desired result. Specifically, the vacuum electron tube uses an heated filament, by itself or in conjunction with a metal plate called a cathode, to radiate a stream of electrons within (usually) a glass bulb. The bulb itself, whether glass or metal, generally has all gases evacuated, hence a vacuum.

BeamPower

Beam Power Vacuum Tube

This stream is then manipulated or altered by one or more screens, (think of a screen door) placed within the stream to produce the desired effect, usually amplification. Thus, "thermionic" refers to electron excitation by means of heat, and "emissions", refers to that flow. ALL vacuum tube type electronics operate on this principle. The above line drawing illustrates the principle of electron emission very well. The tube in the photo is known as a beam power amplifier due to the way in which the deflector plates, or "beam confining electrodes", directs the flow of electrons into a narrow path. Outside of the deflector plates, most all other tubes operate exactly as the beam-power tube.

Simple! Now that you know about the name, the question naturally arises as to why I gave this site such an esoteric moniker. The reason is that ALL of the electronic gear I collect is of the tube type. The unique, and elegant manner that tubes function has fascinated me since I first learned the underlying theory and principles when I was a lad of 19. "Solid State" (transistors and chips) in my book, can not compete with "Hollow State".


Purpose

The purpose of this site is to showcase my private collection of vintage radio and radio related gear that I have amassed over the past twenty plus years. But that is not all. I also wanted to provide a venue to help other collectors by publishing data and information that may be useful to those in the antique radio and electronics hobby. As the title implies, this is MOSTLY a site devoted to tube-based electronic devices. But collecting, like most human endeavors, can be an evolving one. Such has happened to me. Over the past five years or so, I have become quite passionate about test equipment built during the 1950 to 1970 period by Tektronix Inc. The quality built into their oscilloscopes, generators, and other equipment during that time frame was cutting edge and world-leading. I have now amassed a respectable collection of devices from this company. While most of the gear I have from Tek is tube-based, several pieces are partially solid state, and a few are completely devoid of tubes. So, while most of the devices you find on these pages have tubes, a few won't.


Notes

If you have any difficulty viewing this page (looks like a Chinese dinner entre' on your browser), PLEASE, write a note to the webmaster stating what browser you are using, and a brief description of the problem. Thanks!

Lastly, I wished to offer my years of collecting and restoration experience to those of the public who, though collectors of antique radios and other vintage equipment, do not want to repair or restore their own.

Disclaimer: Currently, this site is new and as such, quite rough and in an unfinished state. There may be broken links, some display problems, and missing content, not to mention the occasional spelling and grammatical faux pas. Further, keep in mind that this site has been coded by me personally in the development IDE known as Quanta, a web tool from the Linux community. Unlike many development programs out there, Quanta is not WYSIWYG. No drag'n'drop here. Ergo, I am forced to rely upon skills and memories of HTML construction long disused. Please bear with me as I work to resolve these issues, add more material, and re-learn how the hell it was to build a table. I promise that the wait will be worth it. With the present economic woes that have befallen us here in the U.S. along with rest of the globe, I should have plenty of time to devote to the crafting of a web presence worthy of this most interesting hobby. A presence that I hope you will find both enjoyable, and informative.


Current Site News

*Since scrolling is not a favored national pasttime, I have moved older News items to a new page. To read the old articles, you can either click News Archive here, or select the link from the left main menu of any page.

01/24/2016: Spent the morning updating the archive of this site on my local drive. I then uploaded the entire site to neocities. Already having problems with their server. I meticulously went through my files to make sure all was up to date, then examined the copies on the neocities server, all matched. Yet when I look at the site statistics, neocities still reports that the site has not been updated for 11 hours, and many of the pages still show old data. Double checking of all files confirms that neocities is not updating their server. Looks like I may have to find another server that actually works consistently.

01/23/2016: Website is once again back online with with a new server, neocities.org. With a little luck, should not have to move it for awhile. Have checked links, text, images, etc., and all seems to function as it should. Will try to update the various pages as I get the chance. A lot has happened since my last update, with several equipment acquisitions, most notably a boat load of Tektronix gear.

11/21/2011: Once again at the PC console, trying to make a few updates to the site. The changes today on Thermionic Emissions entails the addition of a photo of the Clough Brengle Model 345 Capacitance, Resistance, and Turns-Ratio Bridge inserted at the top of it's respective page, along with a small blurb of text. The page originally referred to the Model 245, and was in error. The Clough-Brengle main page was updated to reflect the change.

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