Thursday, June 09, 2016
The tube museum
Noticed a website for a Vacuum Tube Museum, apparently tied to the Smithsonian system. Seems awfully ambitious in plans, with awfully limited results so far. Smells a bit like vaporware. Successful tech museums usually start as one man's collection, and expand organically and gradually from the inherited core.
The website shows sample exhibits, exclusively focused on the high-dollar side of tube equipment. Hallicrafters ham xmtrs, HP and Tek test equipment, McIntosh audio.
I don't see any of the everyday tube world. No Philco or Zenith console receivers, no Webcor phonographs, no battery-powered portables, no hearing aids, no movie projectors, no office intercoms or Dictaphones.
Also I don't see anything non-American. Seems that a museum would want to pay special attention to the Russian parallel universe where tubes and discrete circuitry lasted 30 years after Americans went bonkers. Especially since the title is International Tube Museum, and even more especially since the high-dollar audiophiles, who ARE represented, depend crucially on new Russian tubes.
Labels: Alternate universe
¶ 5:54 PM
