vacuum tube

See synonyms for vacuum tube on Thesaurus.com
noun
  1. Also called, especially British, vacuum valve . an electron tube from which almost all air or gas has been evacuated: formerly used extensively in radio and electronics.

  2. a sealed glass tube with electrodes and a partial vacuum or a highly rarefied gas, used to observe the effects of a discharge of electricity passed through it.

Origin of vacuum tube

1
First recorded in 1775–85

Words Nearby vacuum tube

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2024

How to use vacuum tube in a sentence

  • These are met with in barometers, spray arresters, and filter pumps, in condensers and some forms of vacuum tube.

  • A form of vacuum tube which has proved very successful in the author's hands is sketched in Fig. 38.

    On Laboratory Arts | Richard Threlfall

British Dictionary definitions for vacuum tube

vacuum tube

noun
  1. another name for valve (def. 3)

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Scientific definitions for vacuum tube

vacuum tube

  1. An electron tube from which all air has been removed. The vacuum ensures transparency inside the tube for electric fields and moving electrons. Most electron tubes are vacuum tubes; cathode-ray tubes, which include television picture tubes and other video display tubes, are the most widely used vacuum tubes. In other electronic applications, vacuum tubes have largely been replaced by transistors.

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2011. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.