3 ms·

There are a couple of companies that still make CRTs (Google turns up Thomas and Gassler for display rather than X-ray applications), but I expect your stock op

There are a couple of companies that still make CRTs (Google turns up Thomas and Gassler for display rather than X-ray applications), but I expect your stock options will have to have done very well to afford their services on a small scale. Still, if someone were sufficiently motivated, I bet it would be possible to arrange a group buy of a limited run of tubes for some retro device. Or you can take up glass blowing! This is, in principle, 125-year-old technology, and therefore possible to construct with non-esoteric tooling.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
> This is, in principle, 125-year-old technology, and therefore possible to construct with non-esoteric tooling. Tooling maybe, but I wouldn't underestimate the required know-how. For example, making good vacuum-grade glass-to-metal seals is a technology that took decades of research and experimentation.
- cyberax 3y ago
  Vacuum tubes are still being made. And all the patents for the seals and joints have long expired.
  - Roark66 3y ago
    And they definitely, describe in great detail in patent documents how to make their "secret sauce", right? No, wrong. Patents are often written in a way to give maximum protection and minimum information how to recreate the thing.
    - kragen 3y ago
      according to the law, the patent office has the job of rejecting patents that don't give enough information, and throughout the middle of the 20th century they seem to have done a reasonably good job of it. i've found reams of valuable information in patents from that time period, though not specifically about vacuum-sealing glassblowing also, fusion (not online, but available in many university libraries) is the quarterly journal of the american scientific glassblowers society https://asgs-glass.org/fusion-journal-asgs/ https://asgs-glass.org/fusion-journal-asgs/ and they also have had symposia which have published proceedings (not online) and it's common for scientific papers from the period when this stuff was getting figured out to describe their apparatus in detail (rather than saying they purchased such-and-such a model from such-and-such a company), and those are online finally, the bell jar seems to be defunct, but they have put their 27 issues online https://www.belljar.net/articles.html https://www.belljar.net/articles.html

mitthrowaway2 3y ago

> This is, in principle, 125-year-old technology, and therefore possible to construct with non-esoteric tooling. Tooling maybe, but I wouldn't underestimate the required know-how. For example, making good vacuum-grade glass-to-metal seals is a technology that took decades of research and experimentation.

cyberax 3y ago
Vacuum tubes are still being made. And all the patents for the seals and joints have long expired.
- Roark66 3y ago
  And they definitely, describe in great detail in patent documents how to make their "secret sauce", right? No, wrong. Patents are often written in a way to give maximum protection and minimum information how to recreate the thing.
  - kragen 3y ago
    according to the law, the patent office has the job of rejecting patents that don't give enough information, and throughout the middle of the 20th century they seem to have done a reasonably good job of it. i've found reams of valuable information in patents from that time period, though not specifically about vacuum-sealing glassblowing also, fusion (not online, but available in many university libraries) is the quarterly journal of the american scientific glassblowers society https://asgs-glass.org/fusion-journal-asgs/ https://asgs-glass.org/fusion-journal-asgs/ and they also have had symposia which have published proceedings (not online) and it's common for scientific papers from the period when this stuff was getting figured out to describe their apparatus in detail (rather than saying they purchased such-and-such a model from such-and-such a company), and those are online finally, the bell jar seems to be defunct, but they have put their 27 issues online https://www.belljar.net/articles.html https://www.belljar.net/articles.html