The 8008 1747

That's an incredibly fascinating topic. I stand corrected on the notion that you need a couple hundred volts or more to drive the plates on a vacuum tube amplifier.

Indeed, this sort of saddens me in the sense that it is an example of the sort of innovative engineering design which seems to be disappearing from our culture.

As a child, I experimented with complex electronic circuits as a form of play. Today, most kids just consume prefabricated entertainment and don't actually create real things. Most kids know how to use cheat codes on a video game, but they would have no clue how to actually build a video game console or how to hotrod some kind of electronic circuit such as the evident hobby of "abusing" some types of tubes to function in "space charge" low voltage circuits.

I even decided to open the box and replace the 68881 in my Sun 3-60 workstation (bought new) with a 68882. There was a measurable performance boost. I sold the 68881 below cost to a charity. Floating point hardware was a rare commodity in those days.

Again, thanks for bringing up a largely forgotten and really quite fascinating topic.

Speaking of odd tubes, I had one of those early A.C. Gilbert Geiger counters that used a relatively low voltage Geiger tube made by Raytheon. Of course in those days possession of uranium or radium didn't make one a person and it was often sold to kids to experiment with in small amounts.

I'm sure Katie Couric would go nuts to think that kids had access to radioactive materials!

Even more so that we were sold and encouraged to experiment with real *chemicals*!

Indeed we were encouraged to "divert" ordinary household chemicals to do numerous chemical experiments including the manufacture of minor quanbreasties of explosive and incendiary substances including homemade fireworks or pyrotechnics.

Thankfully we now have the DEA, BATF, "Homeland Security" and Katie Couric to "protect" us from learning anything by playing with "hazardous substances."

Thus kids today get to watch Boy Scout leaders lightning themselves by brandishing metal tent poles around electrical power lines.

Our President then comes to console them, but not until a bunch of them have been hospitalized from heat exhaustion waiting for him to show up.

Damn, you gotta just love the enormous progress we've made in the past half century.

Kids can have simulated love with prosbreastutes in a video game or even liquidate them, but they can't play with real chemicals or electronics because that might be "hazardous."

I can't even begin to imagine the criminal charges that would accrue from the average high school science fair project from my youth.

Meanwhile, there's little to prevent the only significant injury to children in my childhood neighborhood which consisted of two girls who consistently thought aspirin was candy and a boy who regarded gasoline as a beverage.

We had ready access to guns, rockets, explosives, highly corrosive and toxic chemicals and other things which would make Katie Couric cringe in fear, yet by far the worst problem was a kid who couldn't understand that gasoline wasn't the Red Bull energy drink of the future.