Ad for a tube tester. These were found in drug stores, grocery stores, and other venues. You would rock up with some tubes, and plug them into the right socket on top. Then the tester would tell you if the tube was good or bad. If bad, it had drawers full of new ones, which you could purchase to replace your bad tube.
When transistors took over, there was no longer a need for tube testers, and they faded away by the beginning of the 1970s.
Here is an RCA branded one in the flesh.
I remember these.
We had tube radios and television sets.
Then they came out with the wonder of transistor. There was a big fuss about how may transistors were in your new radio.
I have a small modern version from Mr. Nixie to test my nixie tubed...they are for clocks and nothing nefarious..but if you were a villain you'd DEFINITELY want nixie tubes on your device to look cooler..
I test my tube every day, don’t even need a machine.
Why are these SO big? Would people just disassemble their entire radioset and bring all the tubes? Or does it take like 10 minutes to test one?
There was one of these right inside the door at the drugstore
1920s is probably too early; although there were experiments with television in the ’20s and some non-experimental services were starting to launch in the late-1930s, World War II disrupted television development until the latter half of the 1940s and they didn’t really become accessible to average households until the 1950s or later for much of the world. I’m sure similar tools existed for radio earlier but this specifically mentions television.
My dad used to fix TVs while going to school for his BSEE. I know this machine all too well!
Our local hardware store had one of these probably till late 80s.
Our home stereo was built into the wall, and there was a utility space on the other side to put your mop, broom, vaccum etc. And you could see the entire back of the stereo system with various glowing tubes.
all 18 comments