On Sat, 13 Aug 2011, Scott Dorsey wrote:

Kenneth Scharf wrote:
On 08/13/2011 01:48 PM, Richard Knoppow wrote:

Among other applications sub-miniatures were used in
hearing aids and model aircraft controllers.


Subminiature tubes were developed as bomb fuses for use in mines and
torpedoes.

I think indeed the first subminis that came out of the Raytheon plant
were intended for proximity fuses. Those were designed with very heavy
reinforcement so they could handle heavy acceleration parallel to the
plate, and that same technology made them useful in a lot of other
low-microphonic applications.

Some of the last ones that came out of the plant were spares for the
first and second generation B-52 navigation systems, which used a
von Neumann machine made up of around 250 submini tubes.

In the meantime they went into everything from Army field radios to
weather balloons to condenser microphones.

Not just military stuff. Those Motorola lunchbox type transceivers,
something like the P-33 (maybe that was a later model) used subminatures
in a hybrid. There were some consumer radios that used them. There was
even at least one military general coverage receiver that used them, I
can't remember the model but I remember the surplus ads, and it was quite
a fancy receiver (so likely the subminature tubes did make a difference
there, allowing it to fit into a somewhat reasonable space.

Michael VE2BVW