Mullard EF50 valve

Mullard EF50 designed and introduced in 1938 by Philips and was used by the UK by radar engineers to detect enemy aircraft, so you could say this valve help us win WWII.  Just before Germany invaded Holland, a truckload with 25,000 complete EF50s and many more of their special bases were successfully sent to England.	Mullard EF36 or EF37 used in Colossus, it was an electronic digital computer, built during WWII from over 1700 valves (tubes). It was used to break the codes of the German Lorenz SZ-40 cipher machine that was used by the German High Command. Colossus is sometimes referred to as the world's first fixed program, digital, electronic, computer.

Television tube as a tool of war Radar equipment transmits radio waves. When these are reflected back by the target object -ships, aircraft, vehicles- it is possible to extrapolate the position, distance and speed from the echo. Like radio, radar uses receiver and transmitter tubes (or magnetrons). Radar really began to take off in the Second World War. However, Philips developed a magnetron for radar as early as 1935. An attempt to construct a radio system commissioned by the Royal Netherlands Navy in 1937 ended in failure. During the war, when UK-based Philips Mullard manufactured 40% of all British tubes, the Philips EF50 pentode tube proved to be suitable for radar. The tube would be an instrumental part of the radar system that enabled the British to survive the Battle of Britain. (Philips Research - 100 years of inventions that matter)