Computer America 75th Anniversary of Transistors, Hydrogen Fuel Cell Planes, Parkinsons Research w/ Ralph Bond
Dec 16, 2022
36:16
Story 1: Today marks the 75th anniversary of the first successful test of the transistor
- On this day, December 16, in 1947, scientists at Bell Labs conducted the first successful test of their semiconductor amplifier, the transistor.
- Over time, the transistor totally revolutionized the field of electronics, and paved the way for all the electronic devices in our lives today.
- As one of the most important building blocks of modern electronics, many historians contend it stands as one of the most important scientific inventions in world history.
- But first, what is a transistor?
- In the most fundamental terms, a transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power.
- Another definition is a transistor is a semiconductor device for amplifying, controlling, and generating electrical signals. Transistors are the active components of integrated circuits, or “microchips,” which often contain billions of these minuscule devices etched into their shiny surfaces.
- In its role as a switch, the transistor either prevents or allows current to flow through.
- Here’s what motivated the researchers at Bell Labs to create the transistor 75 years ago:
- An amazing team of scientists at Bell Labs, most notably John Bardeen and Walter Brattain working under William Shockley, wanted to replace the unreliable and hot vacuum tubes [as well as slow electromechanical relays] used in long-distance telephone service equipment with something much more reliable and cost effective.
- The ideal substitute they created to replace vacuum tubes used to amplify weak electrical signals and produce audible sounds was a highly reliable solid-state transistor which offered dramatically smaller size and significantly less power consumption.
- Although today we’re celebrating the first successful test of the transistor, but the team demonstrated the discovery a week later on December 23, often considered the date the transistor was invented.
- In terms of sharing the news with the world officially, it was not until June 30, 1948, at a press conference that Bell Labs publicly announced their invention.
- At the event a spokesman for the Labs claimed that “it may have far-reaching significance in electronics and electrical communication.”
- Nine years later, Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1956 for the first transistor.
- The first commercial applications for transistors were for hearing aids and “pocket” radios in the 1950s.
- In 1959 scientists Mohamed Atalla and Dawon Kahng at Bell Labs invented the metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor the most widely used type of transistor – this was another major step in the advancement of transistor technology which ultimately laid the foundation for the development of semiconductor chips
- Over time scientists, like those at Fairchild Semiconductors [which was founded in 1957 by scientists who came to California to work with Shockley in Palo Alto but left to start their own venture] and Intel and others, figured out how to super miniaturize transistors and perfect manufacturing of transistors and integrated circuits.
- A semiconductor chip [also called an integrated circuit] is an electric circuit with many components such as transistors and wiring formed on a semiconductor wafer.
- Fast forward to today, and the silicon chips in our smartphones, computers, TVs, cars, you name it, may contain millions if not billions of microscopic transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail, or smaller!
- And recently Intel announced their will be one trillion transistors on their chips by 2030! That’s ten times the number of transistors currently available on modern Central Processing Units, or “brain chips” like the ones that power your laptop, smartphone, etc.
- And here’s how the 75th anniversary of the transistor is of personal family history interest for me.
- My maternal grandfather, Gustave Charles de Coutouly, was on the team at Bell Labs working with William Shockley.
- He was a French scientist who was recruited by the US Army during the first world war to help develop our military’s radio technology.
- He met and married my American maternal grandmother, became an American citizen, the contributed to the field of electronics for decades.
- And regarding William Shockley, after work, my grandfather and Shockley would sometimes go up into the attic of my grandfather’s home in Madison, New Jersey and do research and experiments!
- Unfortunately, Shockley was an ardent eugenicist whose theories of black racial inferiority eventually made him an academic pariah.
- To my knowledge my grandfather did not share his beliefs. I do know from my mother’s stories that my grandmother did not like Shockley – who was famous for having a very difficult personality.
- I’ll never forget the day in the late 1950s [when I was maybe 7 years old] when he was visiting us in California, and he was so excited to give me a “transistor” pocket radio. I was old enough to be thrilled to get this amazing gadget, but too young to understand the significance.