The RCA Selectron -- General Electric BEAMOS Tube



The GE BEAMOS was a 32-megabit / 30 nanosecond digital storage random access memory tube.
It can be considered to be an electron bombarded semiconductor (EBS) target variant of the Williams-Kilburn tube. Although the BEAMOS did not require periodic (millisecond interval) refreshing as in semiconductor RAM devices the readout was partially destructive. A few tens of reads would diminish the charge stored at the target site requiring a re-write cycle, not unlike the destructive readout of magnetic core RAM.

Project Personnel

 George E. Possin
G.W. Ellis
William C. Hughes
Conilee G. Kirkpatrick
Charles Q. Lemmond
Sterling P. Newberry
James F. Norton
Harold G. Parks
R.H. Wilson



Dr. C. G. Kirkpatrick holding prototype BEAMOS device.
































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General Electric BEAMOS Report: figures on the left, text on the right

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General Electric BEAMOS Tube US Patent 4,196,373

figures on the left, text on the right

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