Welcome to Thermionic Emissions
The Strange Website Name
First an explanation, for the uninitiated, of the website name. The term "thermionic emissions", refers to the manner in which vacuum tube-type electronic devices manipulate electron flow to achieve a desired result. Specifically, the vacuum electron tube uses an heated filament, by itself or in conjunction with a metal plate called a cathode, to radiate a stream of electrons within (usually) a glass bulb. The bulb itself, whether glass or metal, generally has all gases evacuated, hence a vacuum.
This stream is then manipulated or altered by one or more screens, (think of a screen door) placed within the stream to produce the desired effect, usually amplification. Thus, "thermionic" refers to electron excitation by means of heat, and "emissions", refers to that flow. ALL vacuum tube type electronics operate on this principle. The above line drawing illustrates the principle of electron emission very well. The tube in the photo is known as a beam power amplifier due to the way in which the deflector plates, or "beam confining electrodes", directs the flow of electrons into a narrow path. Outside of the deflector plates, most all other tubes operate exactly as the beam-power tube.
Simple! Now that you know about the name, the question naturally arises as to why I gave this site such an esoteric moniker. The reason is that ALL of the electronic gear I collect is of the tube type. The unique, and elegant manner that tubes function has fascinated me since I first learned the underlying theory and principles when I was a lad of 19. "Solid State" (transistors and chips) in my book, can not compete with "Hollow State".
Purpose
The purpose of this site is to showcase my private collection of vintage radio and radio related gear that I have amassed over the past twenty plus years. But that is not all. I also wanted to provide a venue to help other collectors by publishing data and information that may be useful to those in the antique radio and electronics hobby.
Notes
If you have any difficulty viewing this page (looks like a Chinese dinner entre' on your browser), PLEASE, write a note to the webmaster stating what browser you are using, and a brief description of the problem. Thanks!
Lastly, I wished to offer my years of collecting and restoration experience to those of the public who, though collectors of antique radios and other vintage equipment, do not want to repair or restore their own.
Disclaimer: Currently, this site is new and as such, quite rough and in an unfinished state. There may be broken links, some display problems, and missing content, not to mention the occasional spelling and grammatical faux pas. Further, keep in mind that this site has been coded by me personally in the development IDE known as Quanta, a web tool from the Linux community. Unlike many development programs out there, Quanta is not WYSIWYG. No drag'n'drop here. Ergo, I am forced to rely upon skills and memories of HTML construction long disused. Please bear with me as I work to resolve these issues, add more material, and re-learn how the hell it was to build a table. I promise that the wait will be worth it. With the present economic woes that have befallen us here in the U.S. along with rest of the globe, I should have plenty of time to devote to the crafting of a web presence worthy of this most interesting hobby. A presence that I hope you will find both enjoyable, and informative.
Current Site News
*Since scrolling is not a favored national pasttime, I have moved older News items to a new page. To read the old articles, you can either click News Archive here, or select the link from the left main menu of any page.
05/13/2009: Continued work on the site with a few minor modifications, along with a new addition to the main C-B page. The first alteration was the re-titling of each and every page so that the browser tab text will clearly reflect the title and content of the particular page being displayed. Hence, when you select the Clough-Brengle page, the browser tab reads "Thermionic Emissions-Clough Brengle" along with the title bar on top of the browser window. This is a much better page titling scheme when compared to what was before. Further, when someone bookmarks a specific page like the main site page, the bookmark will display "Thermionic Emissions" instead of "main.html".
The remaining small modifications had no influence on site appearance or content, but did improve overall maintainability and consistency between individual pages. The addition alluded to previously, was the inclusion of the Clough Brengle Model 230 capacitance, resistance, and turns-ratio bridge link to the main C-B page, and the construction of it's associated Model 230 page containing era-appropriate graphics and image of the unit. In regards to the unit's photo, I was forced to once again scan an advertisement image instead of using an actual photograph of the unit in my possession. Still suffering from the lack of a working digital camera. Very little text has been written for the 230 at this point, but at least the skeletal page structure is in place.
05/5/2009: Performed a few minor tweaks to the site, and one rather large change. The minor changes included the addition of an address bar logo to each page (short-cut icon or favicon). A rather neat little trick I was made aware of courtesy of the members of the rec.antique.radio+phono news group...thanks guys. Doesn't provide any more functionality or information, but does look interesting, and acts as a unique site logo easily identifiable within a list of other sites in someones Bookmarks. Using a Linux editor named KIconEdit, I took as the base graphic one of the old Clough Brengle logos that I had previously scanned, then modified it with the initials TE instead of CB. Further tinkering enhanced the readability and clarity of the finished icon.
The big change is another one which is invisible to the viewer. After much consideration and study, I decided to transfer version control of the website from CVS to Subversion. There are numerous reasons for the change, most of which is added functionality and ease of use, but the major one from my perspective was the seamless manner in which Subversion handles binary files versus CVS. The transfer is now complete, and there are no problems to report. I highly reccommend the application to those who need a versioning system.
The other changes occurring are still in-process. One is the design of a graphical banner, instead of the text version for the top of each page. I have toyed with several iterations and styles, but have yet to be pleased with the results. The final proposed site mod. is one which will take some time to deploy, and I am quite uncertain at this point as to whether I will even make the change. That is the conversion of site construction and design from my web IDE to a CMS (Content Management System) system. After having been suggested by one of the posters on RARP (rec.antique.radios+phono), I have been investigating the various CMS solutions available, and have settled on the Plone + Zope combination. Fully open-source, Linux based, and employing Python, the application is held in high regard by many in the CMS field. The jury is still out as to whether future site development will shift from my trusty Quanta to Plone, as much study needs to be undertaken yet.
