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Nuvistor
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{{short description|Late vacuum tube design designed to compete with transistors}} {{More citations needed||date=June 2021}} [[Image:6DS4NuvistorVacuumTube.jpg|thumb|right|upright|RCA 6DS4 "Nuvistor" triode vacuum tube, ca. 20 mm high and 11 mm in diameter]] [[Image:Nuvistor 530.jpg|thumb|upright|right|Nuvistor with U.S. dime for scale]] The '''nuvistor''' is a type of [[vacuum tube]] announced by [[RCA]] in 1959. Nuvistors were made to compete with the then-new [[bipolar junction transistor]]s, and were much smaller than conventional tubes of the day, almost approaching the compactness of early discrete transistor casings. Due to their small size, there was no space to include a vacuum fitting to evacuate the tube; instead, nuvistors were assembled and processed in a vacuum chamber by simple robotic devices. The tube envelope is made of metal, with a ceramic base. [[Triode]]s and a few [[tetrode]]s and [[pentode]]s were made;<ref name=museum/> nuvistor tetrodes were taller than triodes. Nuvistors are among the highest-performing small-signal radio-frequency receiving tubes, largely due to low [[Parasitic capacitance|stray capacitance]] and [[Parasitic inductance|inductance]] due to their small size.<ref name=museum>{{cite web | title=Nuvistor Valves | publisher=The Valve Museum | date=n.d.| url=http://www.r-type.org/articles/art-150.htm | access-date=1 February 2025}}</ref> They have excellent VHF and UHF performance, and low noise figures, and were widely used throughout the 1960s for low-power applications in [[television set]]s (beginning with RCA's "New Vista" line of color sets in 1961 with the CTC-11 chassis), radio receivers and transmitters, audio equipment, and [[oscilloscope]]s. RCA discontinued their use in television tuners in late 1971. Nuvistor applications included the [[Ampex]] MR-70, a studio tape recorder whose entire electronics section was based on nuvistors, and studio-grade microphones from that era, such as the AKG/Norelco C12a, which employed the 7586. It was also later found that, with minor circuit modification, the nuvistor made a sufficient replacement for the obsolete Telefunken VF14M tube, used in the [[Neumann U47]] studio [[microphone]].<ref>{{cite web | title=History of the VF14 tube and the Phaedrus Audio equivalent VF14M | publisher=Phaedrus Audio| url=https://www.phaedrus-audio.com/VF14M_story.htm |year=2018}}</ref> [[Tektronix]] used nuvistors in several of its high end oscilloscopes of the 1960s,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Nuvistor |url=https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Nuvistor |access-date=2025-01-14 |website=TekWiki}}</ref> before replacing them later with solid-state [[JFET]]s. Nuvistors were used in the [[Ranger program|Ranger space program]] and Russian-made ones (with soldered pigtail leads, more reliable than sockets)<ref name=museum/> were used in the Soviet [[MiG-25]] fighter jet, presumably to [[radiation hardening|radiation-harden]] the fighter's electronics; this was discovered following the [[defection of Viktor Belenko]].
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