These things were nothing like your common idea of valves of nice little glass envelopes with delicate coils and screens all lit up. They were big, heavy and had huge copper radiators on the top to which cooling fans were supposed to be fitted during operation. The looked more like sparkplugs from the devil's own internal combustion engine than a piece of precision (which they in fact were) electronics.
Yeah my Dad had a huge collection of the things, some of them were monsters, I think the Soviet one were bullet proof, so when the KJB kicked your door in and began shooting they at least didn't damage your TV set which was a pretty scare item back in the old USSR...
The odd thing was my Dad was never a TV or Radio engineer but he always seemed to be working on someones old TV Set or Gramaphone and that's were I as kid picked up my interest in all things electronic & technical...
