Transistors, 1948

NY Times ^ | September 1, 2009 | By NICHOLAS BAKALAR

[neverdem]

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first time the word “transistor” appeared in print was in The New York Times on July 1, 1948, in a Page 46 roundup headed “The News of Radio.”

The unsigned article opened with a report of two new radio shows, one called “Mr. Tutt,” and the other titled “Our Miss Brooks,” “with Eve Arden playing the role of a school teacher who encounters a variety of adventures.” The column’s last item began, “A device called a transistor, which has several applications in radio where a vacuum tube ordinarily is employed, was demonstrated for the first time yesterday.”

There followed a technically accurate description of the gadget, a small metal cylinder consisting of two fine wires connected to a tiny piece of semi-conductive material soldered to a metal base. The transistor, it said, was used as an amplifier in a radio receiver “which contained none of the conventional tubes.”

But the first transistors did not work well, and it was not until Jan. 1, 1952, that an article — on Page 30, by William Laurence — reported on the development of a new and more practical “junction transistor.” On Dec. 30, 1952, an unsigned article on Page 29 described the first consumer product to use transistors: a hearing aid produced by the Sonotone Corporation...

[SpaceBar]

Interesting piece of trivia...

Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, an Austro-Hungarian physicist invented the MOSFET in 1925 and the electrolytic capacitor in the 1920’s. He filed several patents describing the construction and operation of transistors as well as many features of modern transistors. When Brattain, Bardeen and Shockley tried to get a patent on their device, most of their claims were rejected due to the Lilienfeld patents.

[ruination]

Speaking of the transistor, there is now a drive to prevent a park being named after its lead inventor, William Shockley, because of his views on race. Pretty soon the leftists will try to remove or rewrite the first few centuries of the U.S.’s history.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125167291476670823.html

[sonofstrangelove]

The integration of tiny transistors led to the first microchip in 1958 built by both Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor.

[PhilDragoo]

1947: Invention of the Transistor

No doubt reverse-engineered from the Roswell crash of the Radio Shack delivery saucer from Alpha Centauri.

[SpaceBar]

There is a segment of the late-nite conspiracy radio crowd that believes the bipolar junction transistor was the result of reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology from the supposed Roswell UFO crash of 1947. If one examines the professional qualifications of Bill Shockley as a physicist, it becomes clear that he, an expert in quantum and statistical physics was well qualified to invent, construct, and fully describe the operation of just such a device. It becomes even more ludicrous in light of the 1920’s Lilienfeld patents described above.

[ruination]

Coast to Coast?

[allmost]

How far we’ve come. Got my headphones on, plugged in to my laptop.

[SpaceBar]

Yup Coast to Coast. I refrained mentioning them by name to protect the guilty, but yeah.

[AlexW]

The CK722 was my first transistor, sometime in the mid 50s, followed by the 2N107..Wow, I am getting old, but remember some things :(

[ruination]

Those people have way, way too much spare time. But it’s fun to listen to occasionally.

[Lancey Howard]

Do you realize that you are arguing against a theory that transistors were reverse-engineered from the crash remnants of an alien spaceship?

[SpaceBar]

On a side note, back in the nineties, a caller phoned Art (pre Noory) to discuss aircraft contrails. Art didn't hear the caller clearly and said “chem trails?”. And thus the widespread hoax and misinformation of chem-trails with the government poisoning us with each commercial airline flight was born.

[ruination]

I think I’ve heard one of those shows. Nutty.

[Las Vegas Dave]

American Computer Company had a story about the transistor and Roswell in the late 90’s. Below link is for your entertainment.
http://www.american-computer.com/

(Note: Web site is archived and some links may or may work.)

[tet68]

a theory that transistors were reverse-engineered from the crash remnants of an alien spaceship?

Don’t be silly, it they were they’d be called “Roswells”.

[CanaGuy]

Al Gore invented the internet and now the NYT invents the name “transistor”. Gee, I’m not so sure about this. Wouldn’t it have been published in scientific papers, proposals, journals, etc., first? Just guessing here, don’t clobber me.

[JackOfVA]

The NYT didn’t invent the name “transistor” as it was named that by the developers at Bell Labs as a compound from the words “transfer resistor” meaning that the device seems to have an output resistance that varied in accordance with voltage drive to the base. (Greatly simplifying here).

The NYT just used the word “transistor” as it was given to them by Bell Labs. This is cited, however, as the first public appearance of the word.

Jack

who also recalls his first CK722, built into a code practice oscillator when working on his first amateur radio license.

[t1b8zs]

Always rhought Bell Labs invented it?
Was an AE in the CG ..Hardest course I ever took was Tran Theory at NAS Jax...nothing made sence it all just “was”..PNP,NPN etc geshhhh

[mylife]

All those Valance, J shells and K shells. L0L

[R. Scott]

I listened to Coast to Coast when I was a cab driver - picking apart the junk science was a great way to stay awake waiting for a call.

[fredhead]

So was it a PNP or an NPN transistor?

[BuffaloJack]

It is very heart lifting to see that most of these technological inventions took 4 to 6 years to perfect. We’ve just past year 3 of our own novel electronics device and although it works, it doesn’t work well yet.

[calex59]

It is very heart lifting to see that most of these technological inventions took 4 to 6 years to perfect. We’ve just past year 3 of our own novel electronics device and although it works, it doesn’t work well yet.

Some took a lot longer than 4 to 6 years. It was many, many years before the transistor reached a point where they replaced vacuum tubes as final amplifiers in transmitters with say, 100 watts output power and higher.

[Quix]

Thanks.

[neverdem]

Pretty soon the leftists will try to remove or rewrite the first few centuries of the U.S.’s history.

I doubt it. They will be actively confronted with the demand to know how those African slaves were acquired, i.e. who sold those slaves in the first place? It wasn't white devils. They just bartered for them.

[TexasRepublic]

My first radio was a 2 -transistor set. It still works.

[dragnet2]

The integration of tiny transistors led to the first microchip in 1958 built by both Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor.

Bob Noyce's nickname was the "Mayor of California's Silicon Valley." He was one of the very first scientists to work in the area -- long before the stretch of California had earned the Silicon name He also invented the integrated chip, one of the stepping stones along the way to the microprocessors in today's computers.

[sonofstrangelove]

He was also the founder of Intel corporation in the late 1960s.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

But Texas Instruments was founded before that I believe...putting a plug in for the other guy , from Kansas:

The Chip that Jack Built

****************************EXCERPT******************************

It was a relatively simple device that Jack Kilby showed to a handful of co-workers gathered in TI's semiconductor lab 50 years ago -- only a transistor and other components on a slice of germanium. Little did this group of onlookers know, but Kilby's invention, 7/16-by-1/16-inches in size and called an integrated circuit, was about to revolutionize the electronics industry.

The Answer to a Problem

It was in a relatively deserted laboratory at TI's brand new Semiconductor Building where Jack Kilby first hit on the idea of the integrated circuit. In July 1958, when most employees left for the traditional two-week vacation period, Kilby -- as a new employee with no vacation -- stayed to man the shop.

What caused Kilby to think along the lines that eventually resulted in the integrated circuit? Like many inventors, he set out to solve a problem. In this case, the problem was called "the tyranny of numbers."

For almost 50 years after the turn of the 20th century, the electronics industry had been dominated by vacuum tube technology. But vacuum tubes had inherent limitations. They were fragile, bulky, unreliable, power hungry, and produced considerable heat.

It wasn't until 1947, with the invention of the transistor by Bell Telephone Laboratories, that the vacuum tube problem was solved. Transistors were miniscule in comparison, more reliable, longer lasting, produced less heat, and consumed less power. The transistor stimulated engineers to design ever more complex electronic circuits and equipment containing hundreds or thousands of discrete components such as transistors, diodes, rectifiers and capacitors. But the problem was that these components still had to be interconnected to form electronic circuits, and hand-soldering thousands of components to thousands of bits of wire was expensive and time-consuming. It was also unreliable; every soldered joint was a potential source of trouble. The challenge was to find cost-effective, reliable ways of producing these components and interconnecting them.

One stab at a solution was the Micro-Module program, sponsored by the U.S. Army Signal Corps. The idea was to make all the components a uniform size and shape, with the wiring built into the components. The modules then could be snapped together to make circuits, eliminating the need for wiring the connections.

Back to Top

Enter Kilby

TI was working on the Micro-Module program when Kilby joined the company in 1958. Because of his work with Centralab in Milwaukee, Kilby was familiar with the "tyranny of numbers" problem facing the industry. But he didn't think the Micro-Module was the answer — it didn't address the basic problem of large quantities of components in elaborate circuits.

So Kilby began searching for an alternative, and in the process decided the only thing a semiconductor house could make cost effectively was a semiconductor. "Further thought led me to the conclusion that semiconductors were all that were really required — that resistors and capacitors [passive devices], in particular, could be made from the same material as the active devices [transistors]. I also realized that, since all of the components could be made of a single material, they could also be made in situ interconnected to form a complete circuit," Kilby wrote in a 1976 article titled "Invention of the IC."

Kilby began to write down and sketch out his ideas in July of 1958. By September, he was ready to demonstrate a working integrated circuit built on a piece of semiconductor material. Several executives, including former TI Chairman Mark Shepherd, gathered for the event on September 12, 1958. What they saw was a sliver of germanium, with protruding wires, glued to a glass slide. It was a rough device, but when Kilby pressed the switch, an unending sine curve undulated across the oscilloscope screen. His invention worked — he had solved the problem.

Back to Top

Early Successes

Kilby had made a big breakthrough. But while the U.S. Air Force showed some interest in TI's integrated circuit, industry reacted skeptically. Indeed the IC and its relative merits "provided much of the entertainment at major technical meetings over the next few years," Kilby wrote.

The integrated circuit first won a place in the military market through programs such as the first computer using silicon chips for the Air Force in 1961 and the Minuteman Missile in 1962. Recognizing the need for a "demonstration product" to speed widespread use of the IC, Patrick E. Haggerty, former TI chairman, challenged Kilby to design a calculator as powerful as the large, electro-mechanical desktop models of the day, but small enough to fit in a coat pocket. The resulting electronic hand-held calculator, of which Kilby is a co-inventor, successfully commercialized the integrated circuit.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

fyi

[blam]

"The integration of tiny transistors led to the first microchip in 1958 built by both Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor."

Let's get it straight. Kilby built an intergrated circuit while Noyce is 'reputed' to have made 'notes' about one at about the same time. See if you can find Robert Noyce's name anywhere on the Nobel Prize awarded to Jack Kilby for this invention.

Inventor and Engineer Jack Kilby of Texas Instruments Receives Nobel Prize in Physics for Invention of the Integrated Circuit

[ShadowAce]

[blam]

"But Texas Instruments was founded before that I believe...putting a plug in for the other guy , from Kansas:"

It was a sesmic company servicing the oil industry at this time. Texas Instruments was a subsidary of the seismic company before becoming the parent company...sometime in the mid-80's the sesmic company was sold off to the French company Schumber...(something)

[sionnsar]

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Geezer Geek ping.

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[sionnsar]

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[sionnsar]

Sorry about that! Grabbed the wrong ping list. (Broke my glasses on the plane last night...)

[sionnsar]

Thanks to ShadowAce for the ping. (And may the third try be correct.)

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[sonofstrangelove]

OK

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That would be

About Schlumberger

[blam]

"That would be About Schlumberger "

You got it Ernest.

I always had trouble getting 'slumberjay' out of that company name.

[mkjessup]

There is a segment of the late-nite conspiracy radio crowd that believes the bipolar junction transistor was the result of reverse engineering extraterrestrial technology from the supposed Roswell UFO crash of 1947. If one examines the professional qualifications of Bill Shockley as a physicist, it becomes clear that he, an expert in quantum and statistical physics was well qualified to invent, construct, and fully describe the operation of just such a device.

C'mon, you didn't know that Shockley was an alien? Who do you think delivered the alien-hybrid baby Al Gore to Earth? (born 8 months and 3 weeks after the Roswell crash, coincidence? I think not!) ;)

[MHGinTN]

I thought a Lady scientist at Bell labs invented the transistor?

[mkjessup]

Al Gore’s biological mother from Zeta Reticuli.

Believe it ;)

[MHGinTN]

Ahh, so that’s it! ... Doesn’t she live in one of those eighteen deep tunnels Phil Schneider dug at Groom lake years ago? They say that’s where Al Goregon disappears to on the occasional roadtrip. while awaiting his billions to accumulate through cap and tax his puppet obammy is instituting for him and GE.

[Cyber Liberty]

Probably a MOSFET.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Yes looks German to me ...and berger should be like Burger....and I don’t know anyone that eats berjay....LOL!

[mkjessup]

Sorry, you know too much now. Look at the little red spot:

[Nervous Tick]

>> The CK722 was my first transistor, sometime in the mid 50s, followed by the 2N107

I remember those too! They were still going strong in the mid ‘60s.

I remember a Radio Shack book called “101 electronics projects” (or something to that effect). I found a coupon for it in a magazine in the doctor’s office, and I pestered my mom until she let me mail-order it. It cost 50 cents. I must have been about 8 or thereabouts.

The 2N107 was featured in several projects from that book.

Couple other p/n I bet you recall: 2N301 (”power” transistor), and 1N34 diode.

Even before I got interested in “doing” electronics, my Dad used to work on TVs. He’d put us kids to work cutting parts out of old chassis for his junk box. I loved it. Still have his old tube caddy and some other stuff from that era. My favorite were the mica capacitors with the colored dots on them. I bet I had the resistor and capacitor color code memorized before I was ten.

Now I’m working with 0603 SMT packages, .5mm pitch TSSOP ICs and other stuff that I can’t even see without a magnifying glass.

Time marches on, eh?

FRegards

[Marine_Uncle]

Names, devices, companies from the past. I loved it all.