Talk:7AK7

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{{WikiProject Computing |importance=Low}}

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There were many types of computer architectures in use in the 1950's, and many types of special computer tubes were used in those machines. Condensed descriptions of over 250 first generation computers are given in the 1961 edition of the Third Survey of Domestic Electronic Digital Computing Systems. In several entries on tube based computers, the total number of types and tubes in a given machine are listed in the statistics. A cursory review of the total number of types vs. total quantity of tubes used in any arbitrary sample of machine entries would indicate that neither the 7AK7 nor any other single type could have been "the computer tube", and there was certainly no "standard tube for all computers into the late 1950s" as the article claims. [The reader will notice that by 1961 the proportion of tube based machines was in rapid decline compared to growth in transistorized computers.]

https://archive.org/details/DTIC_AD0253212/page/n1001/mode/2up?q=tube+types

A THIRD SURVEY OF DOMESTIC ELECTRONIC DIGITAL COMPUTING SYSTEMS

Department of the Army

BALLISTIC RESEARCH LABORATORIES

Report 1115, March 1961

(1085 pages)

The 1955 edition of the same report mentions Whirlwind before it was decommissioned. An OCR-to-html version of the report is at

http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/BRL.html It states that the Whirlwind used around 7200 tubes of 40 types.