"Michael Black" wrote in message
ample.net...
On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Scott Dorsey wrote:



Lots of snipping here...

Subminiature tubes were developed as bomb fuses for use
in mines and
torpedoes.

I think indeed the first subminis that came out of the
Raytheon plant
were intended for proximity fuses. Those were designed
with very heavy
reinforcement so they could handle heavy acceleration
parallel to the
plate, and that same technology made them useful in a lot
of other
low-microphonic applications.

Some of the last ones that came out of the plant were
spares for the
first and second generation B-52 navigation systems,
which used a
von Neumann machine made up of around 250 submini tubes.

In the meantime they went into everything from Army field
radios to
weather balloons to condenser microphones.

Not just military stuff. Those Motorola lunchbox type
transceivers, something like the P-33 (maybe that was a
later model) used subminatures in a hybrid. There were
some consumer radios that used them. There was even at
least one military general coverage receiver that used
them, I can't remember the model but I remember the
surplus ads, and it was quite a fancy receiver (so likely
the subminature tubes did make a difference there,
allowing it to fit into a somewhat reasonable space.

Michael VE2BVW

I think they were used in a couple of receivers made for
the Navy by RCA. I remember seeing the solder-in tubes
there. As Scott points out they were also used in some
miniature microphones, for instance the Altec-Lansing M-20
system (I have one somewhere).


--
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles
WB6KBL