[rexthonyy]

I studied vacuum tubes back when I was in school. What a fascinating thing, the physics of it. It was a cool tech for its time but there is no way they could match the speed of the transistors that followed, it is just physically impossible, but still, it is nostalgically cool.

[UncleOxidant]

> no way they could match the speed of the transistors

Weren't there specialized tubes that could operate in the gigahertz range - nuvistors, for example.

[labcomputer]

Yup. Also, power RF amps are often still today based on (a type of) tubes.

Tektronix had some tube-based active probes with up to 850MHz of bandwidth, for use with equivalent-time sampling oscilloscopes in the early 1960's. The first real-time transistorized scope able to use that bandwidth didn't come along until the late 1970's.