This statistics is for USA market alone, and it does measure value. It is fair to assume that the increasing competition from transistors drived the unit cost of tubes down, so the total number of tubes sold in USA may have peaked after 1957.
And: the rest of the world was far behind USA on semiconductor technology. I guess that receiving tubes production peaked globally in the first half on the '60. The extremely slow decline of the tubes in consumer electronics is the real quirk that always amazed me. One would guess that, from late '60, in the western world at least, no one would have ever thinked about buying a tube-based consumer electronic device: transistor based equivalent devices were already available at nearly the same cost. Marketing power, I guess.
And: the rest of the world was far behind USA on semiconductor technology. I guess that receiving tubes production peaked globally in the first half on the '60. The extremely slow decline of the tubes in consumer electronics is the real quirk that always amazed me. One would guess that, from late '60, in the western world at least, no one would have ever thinked about buying a tube-based consumer electronic device: transistor based equivalent devices were already available at nearly the same cost. Marketing power, I guess.
Perhaps it was more money based than anything else? - solid-state devices in the early days were quite expensive. While a tried and true vacuum tube was a known quantity. Vacuum tubes in television was a thing for a long time.
About 1973, I bought an AM/FM table radio for a friend. It was tubes. Perhaps special-case because 100MHz transistors were scarce.
About 1972 some amplifiers were bought for a studio that I later ran. At least one was tubes, but it was a Dyna-Kit so may have been bought for price; three other amps were the early Dyna-Kit transistor amps. IIRC the Dyna tube amp was in the catalog for some time.
About 1977 I got some 150-Watt tube amps which had been in service about 5 years (then one caught fire). Special case: transistor amps in this power range were not common at the time, and a 115-Volt output was used to drive film-projector motors off-speed. The big tube PA amps would have been proven technology at the time these were bought. By 1977 I guess the least wisp of smoke was a good excuse to transistorize.
Just for comparison: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimhan...y-transistors-have-ever-shipped/#4705c9904425
-Gnobuddy
-Gnobuddy
I'm not sure what the point of this discussion is, so I don't know whether it's fair to count transistors that are embedded into IC's. The technological step from seeing a transistor as a stand-alone device; to embedding dozens, hundreds, and now millions of the things in integrated circuits makes me look at the IC as a different critter altogether.
Even so, the numbers underscore a natural path as a technology appears, finds niches and special cases to fill, develops, matures and dominates. I wonder if the units-produced-versus-time curves would look much different for, say, "machine screws". In 1850, how many consumer products would be fastened by screws? In what years would they become common? When did they become pervasive?
Dale
Even so, the numbers underscore a natural path as a technology appears, finds niches and special cases to fill, develops, matures and dominates. I wonder if the units-produced-versus-time curves would look much different for, say, "machine screws". In 1850, how many consumer products would be fastened by screws? In what years would they become common? When did they become pervasive?
Dale
Just trivia... to get a wild estimate of how many tubes are sold today?
Here is a quote from Shuguang Vacuum Tube Manufacturing:
"In 2005, vacuum tube factory is planned to reach revenue of RMB 23 million and strive to set a new historic record for fifteen years. Thumb tube production line is planned to extend production capacity of 520,000 pieces each year."
So half a million for Shuquang. Aren't there only four or five actual manufacturers of tubes in the world now?
If we make the very crude approximation that each of them sell half a million tubes annually, then the entire world's annual production of new tubes would be something like two to two-and-a-half million tubes. (Just a ballpark guesstimate, don't expect accuracy, only order-of-magnitude.)
More trivia: with 7.5 billion people on earth now, 2.5 million tubes would amount to roughly one tube per year for every 3000 people on the planet.
That's lower than I would have guessed. I guess there are a lot fewer electric guitar players than I thought. Either that, or most electric guitarists have moved on to solid-state amplification.
-Gnobuddy
The 520k figure was from 2005 and likely represented the maximum production output, but the actual sales figure is still unknown... since the Chinese manufacturers are notorious for their over-capacity, a more conservative estimate for the actual sales might be just a half to a third, say 200k a year. Fast forward 13 years, so that figure might be even lower... anyway, your guess is as good as mine, who knows?!
Shall we say, order of magnitude ten raised to the power six, i.e. a million?
In other words, we don't know if its one million, 0.8 million, or two million. But it's unlikely to be one order of magnitude less (i.e. just a few hundred thousands), and it's unlikely to be one order of magnitude bigger (i.e., tens of millions.)
-Gnobuddy
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