[HiDARG-MEMBERS] 70 years ago the transistor was born

[David Freitag]

Thanks Max.  Made possible all manner of revolutions.  What a contrast 
to the NORAD vacuum tube computers I walked through in the mid 70's!

Dave
W7KFO


On 12/29/2017 6:28 AM, Max Vaughan wrote:
>
>
>   Could not let this one go without a mention.
>   ..>Max
>
>
>   70 years ago the transistor was born
>
> December 27, 2017 | 12:03
>
> 70 years ago the transistor was born
>
> 70 years ago the transistor was born
>
> It was the day before Christmas Eve in 1947 while working at Bell labs 
> that John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley managed to 
> coax the first transistor into life. Without doubt, this was the 
> signal that triggered the start of a huge technical revolution without 
> equal.
>
> Their ubiquity means we take them for granted. On some of today’s most 
> highly integrated chips, there are more transistors packed together 
> than there are people standing on the Earth and this trend is ever 
> rising. Research is underway on the next generation of semiconductors 
> with a structural width of only 7 nm which could well mark the 
> physical limit to the Moore’s Law prediction. So far, it has been a 
> long journey, driven by constant innovation.
>
> At the famous Bell Labs in New Jersey between November and the end of 
> December 1947 two researchers named Bardeen and Brattain (assisted by 
> Shockley) developed and demonstrated the successful operation of a 
> so-called ‘point-contact transistor 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point-contact_transistor> ‘ which was 
> the precursor to the ‘Bipolar transistor 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bipolar_junction_transistor>’ and 
> successor to the bulky and energy-hungry vacuum tube. In 1956, the 
> three researchers were awarded the Nobel Prize for physics for their 
> game-changing invention. The Nobel committee got this one spot-on; 
> John Bardeen is one of only two people to receive two Nobel Prizes in 
> the same discipline (and the only one in physics).
>
> From this first step into the world of the solid-state device the rate 
> of new developments has escalated: as early as 1949 Werner Jacobi 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_integrated_circuit> 
> developed and patented the first known integrated transistor amplifier 
> which was not ever commercially exploited. Jack Kilby 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Kilby> was more successful with 
> his integrated flip-flop consisting of two bipolar transistors on a 
> germanium substrate. The first ‘genuine’ monolithic IC however was 
> co-invented by Robert Noyce 
> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Noyce> and patented in 1959. 
> Throughout the 1950s a cost-cutting battle ensued between 
> manufacturers of existing vacuum technology and the semiconductor 
> new-boy on the block. Most of the now familiar major semiconductor 
> manufacturers were founded in the 1960s.
>
> Today we hardly give them a thought but we carry tens of billions of 
> transistors around with us as a matter of course in the form of a 
> smartphone. Most new devices designed today come equipped with some 
> semiconductor technology. It’s the season for celebrating so engineers 
> around the world can raise a glass to commemorate the transistor’s 
> three founders and their inspiring Christmas breakthrough seventy 
> years ago!
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 73
> Max Vaughan KF7MAX  Secretary
> High Desert Amateur Radio Group
> PO Box 723
> Bend, Oregon USA   97709
>
> www.hidarg.org <http://www.hidarg.org/>
>
> maxv at horizonps.com <mailto:maxv at horizonps.com>kf7max at arrl.net 
> <mailto:kf7max at arrl.net>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>
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