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#1
07-23-2010, 02:27 AM
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Ever seen a vacuum tube this big?
I don't have much in the way of old vacuum tube equipment as I stick to solid state Pioneer stuff...but I was given this old Westinghouse vacuum tube recently and figured it would be a point of interest for someone here.
I have absolutely no use for it, so I will probably figure out how to work it in as a decoration for the living room...I think it was used for WWII era radar equipment originally. 
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#3
07-23-2010, 05:37 AM
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Hmm.... three leads, so it's probably a diode of some sort. They are so big b/c of the high voltage involved in transmitting; smaller tubes would probably break down and short.
Heck, just seeing that light up would make for an awesome wall decoration. How about a mercury arc rectifier? See here: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/201...rs_are_aw.html For size reference, see last image here: http://www.subbrit.org.uk/sb-sites/s...er/index.shtml 
Last edited by VintagePC; 07-23-2010 at 05:41 AM.
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#4
07-23-2010, 01:32 PM
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yeah, I wish I could hook this guy up to something and let it glow like it is supposed to...but I would probably have to run a few megawatts of power through it to get that effect. I was thinking about gutting the internals and fabricating some type of light fixutre inside of it that would simulate the same effect.
I know some of these old tubes had radioactive material in them though, so I'm a bit skeptical about opening it up.
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#5
07-23-2010, 01:41 PM
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Can you read the type number on the base? This looks like a vacuum rectifier to
me. You could certainly hook up the filament and get some nice lighting once you know the specs, assuming it is not burned out. Welcome to VK by the way!
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#9
07-14-2011, 02:41 PM
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That is a high voltage rectifier diode. Essentially an overgrown 1B3 or 3A3. GE referred to them as "kenotrons".
These guys had 2 major applications, X-ray machines and industrial precipitators, used for cleaning dust and particulates from cleanrooms and smokestacks. Not particularly high current, as it is a vacuum device not mercury vapor filled like an 857B. This looks like one of the bigger (longer) envelope units, so probably good for ~100kV+ service. Often these tubes were immersed in a tank of insulating oil to prevent breakdown/arcing. They usually have a pure tungsten filament, which glows VERY bright, unlike the thoriated tungsten used for most transmitting tubes. Yours looks to have very low usage, as the glass usually turned a dark brown from all the X-rays they gave off.  If you have a type number, I might have a datasheet for it somewhere in my files.
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