"robert casey" wrote in message
...

But back in the early 70's, table radios made the transision from the
"All American 5ive" tube circuit to a solid state circuit that used a
high voltage bipolar transistor and output transformer for the audio
output.


I'm not sure exactly when this transition was made, but I do know that it
occurred sometime well before the "early 70's", I would say that the
transition occurred in the mid 60's, I know from personal experience that
these radios were already in production by late 66, when they first went
into production I don't know.


I was thinking of the SS radios that were "hot chassis". The audio output
transistor had about 100V B+ on it. Before these, there were some SS
radios that had small power transformers and were essentially portable
circuits inserted inside a table radio cabinet. But it's the hot chassis
high voltage transistors that ran in class A "single ended" I was thinking
of.


That's probably why we never saw them here in the UK. There were the
occasional single-ended transistor output stages in early SS and hybrid car
radios, and some Japanese-made TV sets, but that was about it. A 300V B+
supply would have been rather too much.


I thought the common bipolar transistor was a "triode".

It's a three-electrode device, so yes, it's a triode. That doesn't mean it's
characteristics are similar to those of a thermionic triode though.



My Chinese friends tell me that the word "transistor" translates into
"crystal triode" in Chinese. :-)


Err..., "transistor" is a contraction of "transfer-resistor", but what it
*is*, is a crystal triode. So if any language group wants it's own word for
the device, rather than just adopt "transistor", then using their own words
for "crystal triode" makes a good deal of sense.

David.