I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon, but the sudden emergence of the transistor in the 50’s, without any lead-up breakthroughs which would have led in a logical path to the development of the transistor, has always stuck in my craw. You have to be an EE to fully appreciate what a quantum leap in technology that the transistor was. ANd now we print millions and billions per square inch, defy any logical explanation, other than reverse engineering, then developing the manufacturing technology to create such densities of transistors.
There were several large companies pouring lots of R&D funds into the development of the transistor. They already had an analog device with many of the same characteristics in the vacuum tube. Both could be used for logic gates and both could be used for amplification.
I had a professor, Gerald Tuma, at the University of Oklahoma, who told us there had been a conference where one of the corporate groups trying to develop transistors presented a paper giving a status of where they were, the challenges they faced, and an estimate of how long it would be before they would succeed. After they were done, one of the other corporate entities took the podium and announced: We have them! There is a table set up at the back where you can order them!
And yes, I am a EE. I am trained in quantum mechanics and have even designed masks for the process of producing transistors and circuits on a substrate.
My company, Honeywell, was planning on using substrates to replace wire wrap boards to build mainframes. They did it for years.
I used to believe whole hearted in UFO’s and all that ‘’aliens come to Earth’’ stuff but not so much anymore. The distances involved in interstellar travel are simply staggering and how would some alien civilization even know we're down here?.
Still, how in the world did humanity go from veritable cave dwelling to suddenly creating marvels like the pyramids? How could humans, all alone and unaided in some superior way have done this?