Posted on 09/02/2009 1:05:58 AM PDT by 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...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You got it Ernest.
I always had trouble getting 'slumberjay' out of that company name.
I thought a Lady scientist at Bell labs invented the transistor?
Al Gore’s biological mother from Zeta Reticuli.
Believe it ;)
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.
Probably a MOSFET.
Yes looks German to me ...and berger should be like Burger....and I don’t know anyone that eats berjay....LOL!
>> 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
Names, devices, companies from the past. I loved it all.
The first 'chip' by Jack Kilby.
[singing] This is the chip that Jack built, ya’ll... remember this chip...
When was the first commercial pocket transistor radio sold. My wife’s bother sent us one in the early 60’s that he bought at a Navy exchange in Japan. I think it was a GE and took a 9 volt battery and it still works if I could remember where I put it for sage keeping...
Wow...I think my buddy did some stuff like that in Physics lab./...
I grew up in the wheat fields all I knew about was girls.
I never had a chance to meet a Farmers Daughter but I knew lots of young Chain Saw Widows. My nephew was the electronics wizard doing Ham Radio by 14 and had one of the first TI calculators. Got a EE from Humboldt State and went to work for HP in 81 where he is on a couple of patents. He headed the team that designed their camera module for cell phones...
I had a GE kit shortwave radio feeding a tube pa amp. It worked pretty well until the day I plugged the amp in backwards, (no polarized plug on it). So my receiver had 120 volts running into the headphone out, straight through to ground. Exploding transistors are really LOUD.
The first transistor radio hit the consumer market on October 18, 1954. The Regency TR-1 featured four germanium transistors operating on a 22.5-volt battery that provided over twenty hours of life....
The calm before the storm describes the mood of the electronics industry over the years following the invention of the transistor. While the winds of the world's dominant leaders were light, several small companies warmed the El Niño currents for the next fifty-year storm. The tides turned in 1954 when Texas Instruments and Regency Electronics shared a joint venture that launched the modern age of miniaturized electronics.
Texas Instruments is the only foreign company that Japan allows 100% foreign ownership. TI has five chip factories there.
On my first Navy ship, I worked on a number of non-solid state radios, AN/URC-9. All tubes. 5654, 8532, 5670 mostly. Mechanically tuned, and took over two hours (if you were god at it) to align them. 50’s technology in the early 80’s. Now I work with that redio’s successor, and AN/WSC-3. 70’s technology in the 21st century.
Uh-oh, typo. Not god, good.
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