Eye Tubes

Electric eyes, eye tubes, TV eyes, and my own personal Emmy.

Most people are familiar with the green tuning eye tube found in older radios and in some early tape recorders.

Those were usually the 6E5 or the 6U5 types with a single indicator. If you were in Europe, it was probably an EM84.

This 6AF4 has two independent indicators. This particular one was used in the Pix Eye, which was used to check the grid and screen voltages being fed to a picture tube socket.

At least most people remember them as being green. I saw a movie once where someone was listening to an old radio, and they obviously couldn't find a working eye tube, so they used a RED light bulb.

These vidicon tubes were used in general purpose B/W TV cameras.

Here are several phototubes. Today, the job can be done with a photodiode, no bigger than the pin of one of these tubes.

This is an image orthicon, commonly referred to by engineers as an "emmy". It was the inspiration for the name of the award.

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