|
Our radio club just had a presentation on eye tubes and the following was presented.
1. Allen B. Dumont did invent this tube and sold the patent to RCA for $30000(a lot of money in the 1930s). He used this to start Allen B. Dumont labratories.
2. Zenith and Sylvania developed the 6T5 eye tube to use instead of the RCA 6E5/6U5. It turned out that this tube violated the RCA owned patents, so RCA sued. Zenith and Sylvania agreed to stop producing the 6T5 and use the RCA tubes instead. The 6T5 was used only for about a year and is very hard to find now.
3. Philco refused to buy any eye tube using patents owned by RCA. There are no Philco radios with eye tubes.
4. An octal version of the eye tube was developed during WWII and was very common and cheap at the end of the war. This is why so many capacitor checkers, etc. use them.
5. Eye tubes were not used much in radios after WWII.
|