Marshall KT66 Cascade by Yukio Miyamoto

John Fleming gave the world Thermionic Valves in 1904.  The amplification they made possible delivered the first transatlantic communication. The KT66 powers Marshall amplifiers and Marshall stacks, seried ranks of drivers and amplifiers, have amplified just about every band you have listened to. The idea of utilising the flow of electrons emanating from a heated element, what came to be called the cathode,  came from the observation that the filaments of incandescent light bulbs always failed at the cathode end.  Fleming realised this one way traffic of electrons boiling of the incandescent filament could be exploited to deliver amplification and control of current. Thermionic valves changed the way we live.  Through most of the 20th Century the UK was the biggest manufacturer of thermionic valves with the Mullard factory in Blackburn being the world'd largest manufacturer and most accomplished valve designers. The solid state version of the valve is the transistor.  Transistors have almost completely taken over from thermionic valves; the exceptions being HiFi music and voice amplification and communist military radio and radar applications.   The communists worry about the damage caused to transistors by powerful electromagnetic pulses.  The sort of radiation that emanates from the detonation of thermo nuclear devices.  Thermionic valves very quickly recover from exposure to this kind of event while transistors will tend to be wrecked by them. Yukio Miyamoto's artwork is astonishing and matches the manufacture of valves he illustrates for quality and precision.