I was 12 years old when the below film was produced, and four years away from assembling my first component HiFi system, the heart of which was a Bell Sound Model 2300, a 6L6 push-pull mono amplifier. My nostalgia for the electronics of my youth is manifested by having a quad of EL34's and a pair of 6SN7 glowing away three feet to my right in a modern "tubes on top" YarLand amplifier (photo below the Bell amplifier) that integrates an appealing modern design with old-school technology tweaked to provide low-distortion amplification with no audible noise and hum.
Bell Sound was a pioneer in home audio, and the 2300 was a "between" model made for a couple of years as the old "tubes on top" models were phased out in favor of sleeker, fully enclosed models. Here is a LINK to a short article about Bell Sound and its history. The company was founded in Columbus, Ohio by Floyd W. Bell, and its story is an interesting one, as Bell was one of the pioneers in audio electronics and music reproduction. In fact, Bell Sound is said to have developed the first commercially available reel-to-reel tape recorder in the 1930's.
But I digress. Bell Sound is a small player compared to Bell Labs, the famous research center founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1925. This fascinating film from Bell Labs promotes the future possibilities of the transistor, and gives people a chance to see the roots of the wondrous miracle of modern electronics in its infancy. Note the "portable" television and other electronic dinosaurs in the story. Many of the predictions in the film came true, but the technology of solid-state electronics has already progressed far beyond anything they could have imagined.
For me, vacuum tube audio is a fun bit of nostalgia. But I have no desire to search for a "modern version" of a vacuum tube computer. Tubes can do a very good job of reproducing music compared to their modern solid-state brethren, but for computers? Forget about it! They simply could not do it, and are relegated to dark corners of technology museums.
Bell Sound was a pioneer in home audio, and the 2300 was a "between" model made for a couple of years as the old "tubes on top" models were phased out in favor of sleeker, fully enclosed models. Here is a LINK to a short article about Bell Sound and its history. The company was founded in Columbus, Ohio by Floyd W. Bell, and its story is an interesting one, as Bell was one of the pioneers in audio electronics and music reproduction. In fact, Bell Sound is said to have developed the first commercially available reel-to-reel tape recorder in the 1930's.
But I digress. Bell Sound is a small player compared to Bell Labs, the famous research center founded by Alexander Graham Bell in 1925. This fascinating film from Bell Labs promotes the future possibilities of the transistor, and gives people a chance to see the roots of the wondrous miracle of modern electronics in its infancy. Note the "portable" television and other electronic dinosaurs in the story. Many of the predictions in the film came true, but the technology of solid-state electronics has already progressed far beyond anything they could have imagined.
For me, vacuum tube audio is a fun bit of nostalgia. But I have no desire to search for a "modern version" of a vacuum tube computer. Tubes can do a very good job of reproducing music compared to their modern solid-state brethren, but for computers? Forget about it! They simply could not do it, and are relegated to dark corners of technology museums.
