"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Lou Scheffer wrote:
Transatlantic cables...

Oops - this was NOT one of the first uses of transistors. Another
article states that they were still built with vacuum tubes in 1964,
10 years after transistors were used for other applications, since
transistors were not yet proven to be more reliable. In retrospect
this makes perfect sense - any reliability conscious field will not
rush to adapt new technology, no matter how promising, if the old
technology is working at least OK.

I'm told that the component-qualification rules for undersea-cable
repeaters make space-qualification procedures look amateurish.

Correct. Worked with son of the Bell engineer that qualified the capacitors
for the
repeaters on the Transatlantic cable. Quality was unmatched (even by NASA)
..... of
course the price for a one minute Transatlantic call (at that time) was not
cheap either !

GB