This breathless — and mysteriously incomplete — Modern Mechanix article from 1931 promises a bold future in which vacuum tubes replace motors:
IMAGINE a tube, a thing of glass and metal, replacing a motor to operate a piece of machinery. Imagine a fiat bed printing press–or any machine using a reciprocating motion—getting its energy from a glorified descendant of a radio tube.That's just one of the things that research engineers of the General Electric Company expect to see within the next few years. With Thyratron power tubes and solenoids it is technically possible today.
William C. White, engineer of the vacuum tube research department of General Electric, makes that prediction. The field of vacuum tube engineering, he says, is not to simply do a thing in a different way and with different means, but to do it better and cheaper. It is possible, he adds, that as knowledge of the possibilities of vacuum tubes increases we may have to modify many of our ideas, such as the accepted one that an electric motor is the best and cheapest means of producing mechanical movement, at least in reciprocating parts.
Amazing Vacuum Tubes May Eliminate Motors (Aug, 1931)
