UHF Tubes
By 1935 new tube technologies were required for the development of radar and telecommunications. UHF requirements severely limited the existing tubes, so radical ideas were implemented which affected how these tubes connected to the host system. Two new bases appeared, the acorn tube and the lighthouse tube, both solving the same problems but with different approaches. Thompson, G.M. Rose, Saltzberg and Burnside from RCA created the acorn tube by using far smaller electrodes, with radial short connections. A different approach was taken by the designers of the lighthouse tube, such as the octal-base 2C43, which relied in using concentric cylindrical metal contacts in connections that minimized inductance, thus allowing a much higher frequency.
Nuvistors were very small, reducing stray capacitances and lead inductances. The base and socket were so compact that they were widely used in UHF TV tuners. They could also be used in small-signal applications at lower frequencies, as in the Ampex MR-70, a costly studio tape recorder whose entire electronics section was based on nuvistors.
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