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...

[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.

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

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.

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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.

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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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[sionnsar]

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[sionnsar]

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[sionnsar]

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[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

OK

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

That would be

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