The root of all emitters

[saturated]

I was connecting another circuit on my breadboard as instructed from a textbook.

I was about to start taking measurements etc and noticed I had not connected Vcc to the base resistor.

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So I said well ya know what there's not gonna be any current through the collector resistor 

Sure enough I checked and measuring both ends of the RC wrt ground showed 24V

But when I connected the node to the base resistor a current and voltage drop occured through RC

 

that must have been a trip when guys during the 50s or whenever were able to duplicate or replicate a vacuum tube (triode) with a small piece of plastic and some terminals.