thermionic valve
noun1
Historical An electronic device incorporating electrons from a glowing cathode inside an evacuated glass tube, functioning as a switch, amplifier etc.
- The age of electronics began in 1906 with Lee De Forest's invention of the vacuum tube, or, as the British (led by John Ambrose Fleming, whose work preceded De Forest's) described it, the thermionic valve.2012, George Dyson, Turing's Cathedral, Penguin, published 2013, page 65:
- Derived terms
- valve amplifier