when plasma televisions were first release for sale. $30,000.00 for that please.

That reminds me. Fellow at a place I know took a telephone order on a credit card for a plasma TV priced at $27K. TV was duly trucked to the given address and driver was met by two guys on the curb who signed for it and said they'll carry it inside.

Well, of course the credit card was stolen and the address used was randomly picked and unrelated to anyone involved. As you might expect the sales assistant was shown the door for not following company policy which was strictly no telephone sales for items priced at over 'X' dollars. Oh, and he didn't receive the associated sales commission.

Hard to believe the transaction went through. Surely floor limits are still lower than that even today, which would ordinarily require the store to ring the card issuer to confirm status and sufficient funds prior to the transaction.

^ The transaction was duly authorsied by the card issuer. The card was valid, but stolen on the day it was used. The address was in the Eastern Suburbs. These guys (a gang from Singapore) were experts at this type of card scam which was rife in the day -- talk to any long timer in retail. The store wore the loss and that is why store policy prohibited such transaction by phone.

With phone orders there was no cardholder signature captured at the time of the financial transaction and if the card acceptor (i.e. the store) could not provide a signed card docket then the transaction was reversed in the customer's favour. That is why there was an internal shop floor limit in addition to the usual ring for authorisation limit imposed by the financial institution on the retailer.

The sales assistant involved was a new boy and Loss Prevention (ex cops) checked him out for possible complicity with the thieves, but it turned out that he was just stupid and greedy -- his eyes lit up at the thought of the sales commission involved and he did the whole thing without first referring it to his department manager.

This sort of card scam, involving actual cards and card numbers easily generated by computer programs, went on for decades until only recently when the financial institutions decided to try to stem it. For many years they would not even admit to the annual $ amount of card fraud until it was published by the RBA. It's only when the financial institutions decided that the cost of the fraud exceeded the cost of doing something to prevent it that they acted, and that action has dribbled out slowly via such things as CCV codes and chip-based cards -- but still the easily duplicated magnetic strip cards are in use.

There was no calling the card holder back then. The banks now have a variety of real time monitoring in place now, such as "velocity of usage" checks, but nothing like that was in place when plasma TVs were ~$30K. Heck, you were lucky if the bank even had your current phone number on file.

There has been talk of dispensing with the magnetic stripes and it'll come not a day too soon I reckon. If an EFTPOS machine can read the card via the contacts then ATMs should be able to do it too. There's also been talk of standard ATM cards being fitted with the same technology as credit and debit cards have and this would make ATM cards as secure as those offered by Amex, Visa, MasterCard and Diners.

Personally I don't think there will be a time when card fraud will no longer exist. Locks only keep honest people out, as they say. Making fraud as hard as possible is still worth the effort though. Even those green lumps of plastic with the bulldog studs on them are a good idea as they stop fraudsters fitting skimmers to the card slot. On each machine the studs are in a slightly different position. My only issue with them is that I always handle my wallet and cards left-handed - force of habit from the days of those clunky IBM ATMs which had the card slot on the left of the machine, along with the screen you had to hold your eyes to. Handling my cards that way is difficult with those green things.

Regarding various tales of people allegedly making their own valves at home:
This paper, published in 1915, (LONG before anybody knew about the technological blitzkeig that was to come) goes into excruciating detail about how Irving Langmuir at General Electric produced the first true vacuum tubes in 1913, ironically while we was working on X-Ray tubes):

https://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/proceedings/langmuir.pdf

To get the level of vacuum required for even what would by today's standards be regarded as pretty mediocre "soft" tubes, required the development of extremely sophisticated liquid-air-cooled vacuum pumps and other equipment that only a company the size of GE could afford. The idea of some tinkerer being able to do that in his garage workshop is ludicrous.

Valves really only became practical in the 1920s with the discovery of extremely low vapour pressure oils for the vacuum pumps and chemical "gettering" (which is what produces the characteristic silvery-black coating on the inside of valves).

I've read many stories over the years where people to have claimed to have made their own valves in the "Old Days". The best I could say is that while it's theoretically possible they could have MADE their own valves, getting them to actually WORK would have been another matter entirely

Interestingly, this paper completely demolishes that notion that Lee de Forest was the inventor of the vacuum triode, but the link to it keeps getting deleted from Wikipedia. I guess it's a bit like wanting to present a paper at the Descendants of Benjamin Franklin Society, revealing DNA evidence that Ben Franklin wasn't capable of fathering children...

This American replicates 1913 Type C triode tube construction. He uses getters. He tests the Gm to show that the freshly made tube actually works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAMRHcbE3g0

Modern manufacture of tubes by KR Audio in the Czech Republic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFQSdX1B-ic

"The Vacuum Tube -- A Modern Aladdin's Lamp" AT&T 1940: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-JzxX75oYc

GTC
"This American replicates 1913 Type C triode tube construction. He uses getters. He tests the Gm to show that the freshly made tube actually works."

I'm not saying it can't be done, but you do need specialised equipment. In a lot of the stories I've read, they claim they just used a High School-type vacuum pump, which is hogwash.
A lot of people have apparently bought up equipment from old Picture tube regunning plants, and you could theoretically use that, but unless the metal components of your valves are made from properly processed materials, they're likely to have a fairly short life. I used to work for three TV service companies who ran CRT regunning plants, and I can assure you, if you don't follow the instructions to the letter, and maintained absolute cleanliness, your CRTs would go south in a matter of months.
You can certainly buy all the correct materials for making thermionic devices from various suppliers in China and elsewhere, but the minimum order quantities are likely to be rather large!

I'm not sure what a "1913 Type C Triode" is, by the way. In 1913, the only true vacuum triodes were "Pliotrons" made by General Electric, and they were only available inside the company and to the military.
There was enormous amount of B.S. written by Lee de Forest and others, "long after the fact", basically with the aim of invalidating GE's patents, but you won't find any contemporary documents to support the claims made. To paraphrase Henry Ford: "The history of the Vacuum Tube is mostly bunk..."

I reckon that video certainly demonstrates that you need the right equipment plus skill and experience to make a valve.

I'm not sure what a "1913 Type C Triode" is, by the way

He says "Captain H. Round of the British Marconi Co. designed the type C tube in about 1913."

Seems Henry Round was quite a guy:

http://www.r-type.org/articles/art-014.htm

http://www.electronics-radio.com/articles/history/pioneers/captain-h-j-round.php

Photo at Wyong ham radio field day 2016 of home made valves.

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ahjHm6WeR_o/VtKEiQ7XaKI/AAAAAAAB0yM/GU9qFsKnt4A/s1600/Home%2Bmade%2Bvalves.jpg

Go here and scroll down: http://blog.marxy.org/