High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In electronics, a vacuum tube, electron tube (in North America), or thermionic valve (elsewhere, especially in Britain), reduced to simply "tube" or "valve" in everyday parlance, is a device that relies on the flow of electric current through a vacuum. Vacuum tubes may be used for rectification, amplification, switching, or similar processing or creation of electrical signals. Vacuum tubes rely on thermionic emission of electrons from a hot filament or cathode, that then travel through a vacuum toward the anode (commonly called the plate), which is held at a positive voltage relative to the cathode. Additional electrodes interposed between the cathode and anode can alter the current, giving the tube the ability to amplify and switch.