Comments by "Keit Hammleter" (@keithammleter3824) on "The First Transistors" video.

@velisvideos6208 You never met a normal wife. My wife, a typical woman, she typically asks "tell me about your day" and then proceeds to interrogate me. I suggest the conversation more likely went like this:- "Hi dear. We discovered something important today." "That's nice. I discovered something too. I melted cheese on to the potato. Here, try some - it's delicious. Now, tell me about Fred's new secretary. Is she nice?"
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You are correct. Asianometry has misunderstood a well known review article published by AT&T. Typically, your call would be routed in to what was called a "carrier system". The terminals of the carrier systems used about 25-30 tubes to combine 12 phone calls into one composite signal called a "group" - a carrier terminal at each end that's about 4 tubes per conversation, but 50 - 60 tubes in the system. The method was similar to how various programmes are modulated on to separate "carrier" signals so that you can tune your radio into the one you want. In cross-country call routing, several groups were combined into a "supergroup", needing more tubes, but they were shared for 60 conversations. Supergroups were also combined with other supergroups into a mastergroup - again more tubes, a fair number, but shared between a great number of conversations. Repeaters (ie amplifiers) were needed every 30 miles or so to overcome cable losses. More tubes, but shared between a great number of conversations. When you look at all this infrastructure, its thousands of tubes, but they are handling thousands of calls. If you followed an individual signal from tube to tube end to end, its only dozens of tubes as the other tubes are handling other calls.
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