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Comment by phh | Hacker News Reader

I think that this is kinda like the lamp => transistor change. The immediate usages are not revolutionary, moving from lamps to transistors in amplifiers didn't change everything overnight. First products with transistors were barely better than the ones before. But oh boy did it create an infinite new horizon of opportunities on the long term

I don't really know whether the analogy holds, but I find reasonable reasons to think it does (we could finally get our low-voltage DC home \o/ maglevs \o/ routine/cheap IRMs \o/. that's just the "simple" applications that we can already foresee right now)

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As far as I'm concerned, I enjoy the rich, full sound of silicon semiconductors. I won't be putting any of these LK-99 abominations near my ears any time soon. /s

What do you mean by lamps? Electron tubes?

My guess would be that those letters are an even more shortened form of linear amp(lifier). That term does not really imply anything about transistors vs tubes, but the way GP uses it suggested some jargon exists where it's exclusively used for the tube incarnation of the concept.

> My guess would be that those letters are an even more shortened form of linear amp(lifier).

No, they were colloquially called (void) lamps in at least French and Slavic languages, because they looked like incandescent bulbs, that were called lamps (lampe/лампа) as well.

And tubes glow like a lamp so it is natural to call them so.

So they are lamps, just very inefficient.

I don't think so, it seems to me it is because its semblance with incandescent bulbs. In Spanish are actually also known as "bulbos"[1] (bulbs).

[1] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1lvula_termoi%C3%B3nica

I think so. In some languages electron tubes are called lamps.

Is this the same as “valves” that were always talked about in the distinctive sound retro (now) guitar amplifiers?

Yes

I have always called them vacuum tubes (in US) but I think they are valves in the UK.

Vacuum or Electron tubes describe how they work, lamps are what they look like, and valve describes the function that they provide.

Yes, they're talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube s

thermionic valves I would guess.

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