The return of the vacuum tubes

Long ago, I took a class in eletronics. At the time, I had no mentor, no one to really encourage me to give serious consideration of the potential power of electronics. My teacher, Mr. Vallens, had a terrible lisp and he just didn’t do the subject justice. And in that class, I was working with vacuum tubes.

Vacuum tubes? You mean like in our old TV? I remember them well. Little bulbs of glass with pins on the…