THE GREAT MULLARD MAGIC BLOG — tube

Love it or loathe it, Halloween is upon us once again.  Why are supermarket shelves groaning under the mass of pumpkins ? Well, we all blame the Americans but that is only partly true as in times of yore it was an Irish custom on All Hallows Eve to carve a turnip into Jack-o'-lantern because a potato was too small and squidgy.  This was done, all because of a fokelore tale that went something like this:-  Stingy Jack,a lazy but wily blacksmith tricked Satan into climbing an apple tree, then trapped him by carving crosses around the trunk which Satan...

After a little diversion, let's get back on track looking at the inside of valves, today we'll look at the ANODE. A valve anode typically is shaped as a hollow open topped cylinder, which surrounds a central cathode and any other electrodes. Although the cylindrical type is most commonly encountered due to it’s efficiency in both electron capture and heat dissipation, oval or flat pates may also be used. The anode’s purpose is to receive the electrons emitted from the cathode. This happens because the anode has a positive applied potential, which attracts the negatively charged electrons. Indeed, often the...

Hi peeps, well, in response to another valve related query, this time about 'JAN codes', I thought I would pen a little information nuggett here today. I shall be doing a further more detailed blog entry on military coding history and types soon but for now here's a quick info - bite. The JAN code is of course the US Military Joint Army Navy coding introduced in 1942 in which the code for a particular valve type comprises of an alphanumeric code, for example VT-114 and additionally a three digit alpha code. I will deal with the former in more...