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by UncleOxidant 41 days ago
> 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.

1 comments

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.