Beck, Arnold, (194) Oral History, Electronic Engineer, interviewed by William Asprey of the Charles Babbage Institute, describes working for Standard Telephone and Cables in the late 1940s on designing thermionic valves for Lyons and EDSAC which failed. Asked why they failed he notes “Mainly because it wasn’t reliable enough. I don’t want to make excuses, but when development things like that started, people didn’t really appreciate the standards of reliability that were required. Down the road here at EDSAC they didn’t appreciate the troubles they’d get with the cathode failures on lots of their double diodes” https://ethw.org/Oral-History:Arnold_Beck
