University Training of Tube Engineers, in the US and Abroad

Approximately 30 years ago, it became apparent to the US tube industry that new engineering hires were not receiving specialized training in vacuum electronics because most or all universities had dropped related courses from their curricula. Twenty years earlier, the microwave tube industry was hiring engineers with PhD and Master's degrees from Stanford, University of California and MIT, who had actually built tubes in the university laboratories, tested them, and published papers on their work. These engineers, the pioneers in our industry, were approaching middle age in the 70s, and the schools they had graduated from were were no longer interested in microwave tubes. The US military developed similar concerns about this situation since the Cold War was at its peak and the DoD depended on the tube industry for electronic warfare components