What's the difference between the electrical age and the electronics age?
Question: Tom: What's the difference between the electrical age and the electronics age?
Answer: Electrical age equipment manages electricity in the main, electronic equipment manages a specific property of electricity. The triode tube is the best example in telephone history of an electronic device. Previously, in the electrical age, signal strength losses could not be recovered. A signal fades as wire length increases, no matter how much conductor size or line power is increased. You may have a copper wire as thick as a pencil, or a 1,000 volt generator powering your long distance line, but, eventually, your signal will fade. These losses prevented nation wide telephone service until 1915 when an electronic device was employed: the triode tube, a true amplifier, one that created a stronger signal than the original source.
An electronic amplifier increases signal strength, albeit with some distortion. Check out my diagram here. Amplifying occurs within a triode tube when a cathode, much like the filament of a light bulb, is supplied current and becomes white hot. In a vacuum tube this boils off huge amounts of negative ions which are drawn to a positive source called the plate. Again, please see the diagram. In between these two elements, washed by the electron stream, stands a third, the grid, the supplier of the original, weak signal. Amplifying happens as the large, deliberately generated electron flow is gathered by the plate and then sent on. The original signal is now impressed upon the flowing stream and increases in strength as high as the plate voltage is set.
Telephone calls at the edge of understanding became clear. Trans-continental telephone calls, previously impossible, became routine. With electricity, we manipulate electricity as a whole. With electronics, we manage a specific part of electricity: we generate additional electrons and manage their flow. Electricity, the electrical age, electronics, the electron age.