Eiron wrote:
paul packer wrote:


I love Andre's posts---I never understand a word. Translation anyone? :-)


It's Andre being brilliantly funny without being malicious, for a change.
Though he is mistaken in his interpretation, as Hopkins was obviously
criticizing valves. Silicon refers to the glass of the tube; shine,
blue-bleak,
embers, vermillion, to his problems with heating his cathodes. He would
have
known of the work of Guthrie and Edison, but transistors were still a
pipe-dream.

Further proof is found in his 'The Candle Indoors' where he bemoans the
short lifespan of valves and has a sly dig at fans of tetrodes:

Come you indoors, come home; your fading fire
Mend first and vital candle in close heart’s vault:
You there are master, do your own desire;
What hinders? Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbour deft-handed? Are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?

I think John Donne wrote a poem about the use of a long-tailed pair as a
phase-splitter.



Jesus didn't appear to like tetrodes all that much either:

"Why do you see the speck of chaff that is in your brother's eye, but
don't consider the beam that is in your own eye?"