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In Reply to: RE: Samsung small signal tubes posted by CV4109 on December 05, 2015 at 10:14:24
Like those for Toshiba and Matsushita?
Thanks!
Follow Ups:
I don't think so. I think that was a Philips-only thing.
I think to understand tubes from across the pond is to think about the companies (except Mastushita - that was pure Philips).
Hitachi was founded in 1910, versus Toshiba and Samsung which were official founded in 1938. My Hitachi tubes seem to follow a trail of patent lending from the mess of handshaking that is RCA, GE and Westinghouse.
When it comes to Raytheon, I can't find much information about the manifestation of that relationship, but it's definitely military-related. I find it marks when we start seeing the streamlined Hit-Rays popping up, and the retirement and sell-off of the likely mish-mash of old RCA, GE, and Westinghouse equipment.
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May your tubes be lively, warm, and long-lasting. Holy be thy heater.
I have Raytheons made in Japan and so labeled, but none marked in any way as a product made in Korea.
I don't think Philips ever had agreements to produce tubes within Korea. They had them in Japan, India, parts of Eastern Europe, but not Korea.
You probably wouldn't find any Korean-made tubes for Raytheon (or many at all for that matter). The military relation between Raytheon and Hitachi was likely quite strict because of foreign disclosure issues and the decentralized production of advanced military-related electronics. I would hazard the guess that Raytheon supplied Hitachi with much of the processes and tooling necessary to meet a higher standard of quality for regular products (small and large signal tubes, early PCBs), and later helped them expand into high freq/high power communications, microwave, radar, x-ray, and solid state devices.
Three major factors are worth considering: the Korean War, the microwave tube, and the transistor.
Your best allied nations (in a politically tense nuclear world) are ones which are economically well-off. Following standard economic thinking of that era, the solution to success as a developing nation was foreign investment, high exports, solid domestic consumption, and techno-cultural adoption. This is essentially the story of Asian Tiger Nations like South Korea and Vietnam, and to a similar extent Japan. (Japan is a weird case; pre-WW2 commercial interests in Japan were wide and varied, and two atomic bombs didn't really hamper profit-driven cooperation after 1945.)
The microwave-magnetron tube and transistor also played a huge roll. At first, the magnetron was largely produced by Raytheon for military radar in WW2, but its success is also thanks to the microwave oven (popularized in the 60s, and widely adopted by the 70s). In the 60s, Japan developed its own version of the magnetron (cheaper and more compact). I find this is important - it's about as complex as a traditional tube can get. After this, you're moving on to transistors for regular circuit functions.
The transistor was being optimized, produced, and adopted at the peak of tube production in Japan, and during/after the Korean War. Given Raytheon's presence as well as the commercial investment for TVs and radios, there was likely little time wasted migrating Japan to transistor-based tech. This is all-the-more prominent for South Korea's case. Why would they waste time with tubes when the transistor was right around the corner? They may have had runs of small and large tubes, but they didn't seem to make them for any real length of time. I would hazard two guesses:
1) The Korean tubes we find were likely made on the marginal gains associated with buying up old 2nd and 3rd hand equipment and supplies from RCA, GE, Westinghouse, sourced out of America and post-1950s-60s Japan.
2) It wasn't a complete loss as they likely retrofitted much of the tooling (especially vacuum pumps) for the production of TV tube displays and the like. To me, it makes more sense to buy old remaining stocks of signal tubes from America and Europe rather than make your own where you have border-related instabilities, little-to-no in house experiences, and aged/aging tooling. In fact, I bet American and European companies were only glad to sell off stocks of tubes that would have been trashed and marked as a loss.
Sorry for puking that all out. I just find the history, economics, and politics of tech and scientific advancement fascinating! <:D
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May your tubes be lively, warm, and long-lasting. Holy be thy heater.
I only had one pair of Korean made 6L6GC (Realistic Brand). Long gone.
8^)
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