E-mail: jeremy 'at' webiosis.co.uk

The Virtual Valve Museum is the online presentation of my personal collection. This collection has been assembled over a number of years, more seriously from around 1998 onwards, with the decision to share images of it with the world being taken in 1999. There are currently 2473 valves in the collection, 2078 on the website. (*).

The collection is made up of items purchased over the years, and of donations. In each case where a valve has been donated you will find this noted at the bottom of the web page.

Although the museum is virtual, that is I have no space in which to display it to visitors, if you are keen to see any item physically then please contact me. If you want an item photographed from different angles, again let me know.

Take a tour of the valve store!

Displays/Events: If anyone wants elements of the collection to be on display at an event, this can be arranged at cost (e.g. travel, accommodation etc). NB the RD150YB will not fit in my car!

Donations of valves are always welcome!

The current site was redesigned at the end of 2002 but not all the pages have been remodelled yet. The older pages are being worked through gradually, with the valves rephotographed and the new page design applied. If there is an old page you would particularly like to see refreshed straight away let me know.

My original valve website started in 1999 on a little web server tucked away in my office at work, but as it grew I moved it out onto commercial webspace, where it has remained to this day. My ISP is (aq) who sponsor the museum by providing the webspace.

The website is basically split into chunks but I am constantly trying to figure out a better way of representing it all. Currently the bulk of the collection is split between specialist areas and general sections. I have tried to group the other areas together.

Ideally the site will be configurable depending what the viewer wants to see, and I am working to this aim by developing a database. The list of valves is now driven by a PHP script, and this also generates the thumbnail lists accessed via the front page.

Most of the newer images on the site were taken with a Kodak DC280 digital camera. The older pictures were taken either with a Cassio QV-200 which does not have a flash, or with an SLR camera and then scanned in. I prefer using the digital camera and I like the DC280, especially as I now have two closeup lenses which allow me to take pictures from as close as 2" - as opposed to 10" with the standard lens. The older images will gradually be replaced with fresh ones taken with the DC280.

I first became interested in valves, and electronics in general when I was about 8. My grandad drew a sine wave on the wall to try to explain the difference between ac and dc - I forget why but I can still picture that drawing. He had a few old radios including one he built himself, all laid out on a baseboard and looking like a well-made cupboard. He showed me the valves in an old radio he gave me and then told me off as I took each valve out and popped it on the concrete to see what was inside! This started my collection, and soon after I took a battery box out of my Lego set plus two 425PEN's into school and showed the teacher as they lit up.

Myself and a friend often frequented the local TV repair shop, and after a number of years and many visits, the people running the shop retired. My friend phoned me, we were about 12 at the time, and told me they wanted to see us. So off we went. When we got there, all their remaining unsold stock was all on display in various boxes, and with words which have become immortalized we were told "take anything you want". Being 12 I guess I didn't really know what to make of this and hurriedly studied the boxes of valves for any that I might find useful, but it all became clear when I extracted a few and was told to take all the boxes of valves rather than one or two! There must have been a couple of hundred radio/TV valves there. There were a few other bits of kit we wanted and we took the first load back to our house in bags, went back with a wheelbarrow (imagine two 12 year olds carting old radios along the road in a wheelbarrow...), and finally my grandad took us for the last trip in his car.

At secondary school I discovered three things. I forget how or in what order, but they were an electronics shop in the city centre that had loads of old test kit and all sorts of goodies, a TV repair shop near the school, and a house clearance dealer, also near the school.

A number of old radios came from the house clearance shop, and were either pulled apart or sold. I also expanded my valve collection with about 20 old valves from this shop. The TV repair shop owner was a good source of generic white valve boxes, plus he had a small collection himself. The electronics shop was the source of several heavy items of test gear that left their marks on the city busses as I brought them home!

My grandad had made me a workshop in the basement and I could be seen regularly carrying heavy bits of test gear home on the bus after school. The workshop went through many phases as my interests changed between test kit, radios, radio teletype, and at one stage had a wall of test kit, plus Admiralty (Murphy) B40 and B41 receivers, a Creed 7E teletype, several readers and perforators, and associated kit.

The collection itself is a real mixture of the general and the special, including a real live silica valve, a huge water-cooled triode, and many WWII vintage microwave items. It is growing in all directions as I find new things to add or new areas to explore. I trust you will enjoy watching the collection grow.

Part of the collection is featured in the new Brian Jenner book "Men and Collections", published by New Holland Publishing, ISBN 1-84330-554-2. This is to be stocked by Waterstones (and others I expect) and is also available from Amazon (please use the graphic link below to buy books from Amazon!) There isn't a royalty deal but it was fun arranging the valves for the photo shoot!

I hope you like the website and the collection. Comments are welcome, either via the Guestbook or the contact e-mail at the top of this page.

Jeremy M. Harmer LL.M. MBCS MIET MIEEE
Virtual Valve Museum

	Please help support the museum, either by a donation via Paypal or by buying your books from Amazon via the graphics to the left. Each year a significant amount is spent on internet charges in order to keep this website live. If you would like to help, please contact me.

Tube Collectors Association member