Thomson Closes Last U.S. Tube Plant
From
Gizmodo comes the story that Thomson is closing down the last US plant for manufacturing picture tubes.
bq. In what looks like the beginning of the end for picture-tubes, Thomson (the parent company of RCA) has closed down its last U.S. CRT manufacturing plant in Circleville, Ohio. While Thomson will continue to produce some tubes in other countries, the smaller 25" to 36" tubes made in the 50-year-old plant will likely be purchased from other manufacturers. Tubes aren't going to go away completely, but as LCDs continue to improve in quality, they're going to become more of a niche item.
On a side note, there are still some very valid uses for vacuum tubes. Audio purists like them because they sound more 'musical' when they distort. Some high-power (commercial broadcast and industrial) applications have only recently seen solid-state replacements. When Russia shook off its communist funk, they found a ready source for their vacuum tube factories. They had been slow to modernise and develop solid state manufacturing because of the repression of the communist/Marxist rule. This proved to be an advantage for them because they still kept the old technology and it found a ready market in the Western world.
Svetlana and
Tesla are two large companies that come to mind.
Posted by DaveH at March 18, 2004 12:19 PM