The Transistor's 60th Birthday

Apple Acolyte sends in a Forbes piece noting the 60th birthday of the transistor on Dec, 16. For the occasion the AP provides the obligatory Moore's-Law-is-ending, no-it-isn't article. From Forbes: "Sixty years ago, on Dec. 16, 1947, three physicists at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, N.J., built the world's first transistor. William Shockley, John Bardeen and William Brattain had been looking for a semiconductor amplifier to take the place of the vacuum tubes that made radios and other electronics so impossibly bulky, hot and power hungry."

Comments

The hell?

[kaos07]

This post is at least 5 minutes old and no comments?

Either no one cares about the poor transistor, or you've all gotten lives.

Re:The hell?

[Blkdeath]

Maybe no one wants to honour a notorious racist like William Shockley

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley#Beliefs_about_populations_and_genetics

It's sad that when someone applies scientific principles to a politically charged situation they're framed as a bigot.

It is true that unskilled, poor, unintelligent people have more children. They simply have more time on their hands and less grasp of the consequences children will have on their lifestyle and they tend to have less access (voluntarily or financially) to proper modern birth control methods and hey, when you've got a lot of time on your hand sex is a great passtime!

Shockley did conclude through his research that this happens more with black families than with whites, however he proposed that all people with sub-100 IQs (no further qualification) should be paid for voluntary sterilization.

His ideas while radical at the time have been tossed around for decades. It is widely held that uneducated, unskilled people who do either no or menial labour greatly increase the chances that their children will do much of the same later in life. It's why ghetto-style atmospheres tend to be cyclical and highly self-supporting. It's also why people who "escape" from that life are notable exceptions.

The man was a scientist and one who contributed one of the most pivotal pieces of our way of life to date. That's not something that should be undermined by a piece of socio-politically charged research that he did besides.

Then again there's almost always two sides to every major scientific discovery. Einstein gave us atomic energy but he also gave us atomic weapons (for which I understand he was forever mournful). Shockley gave us something that revolutionized the way we live, work and play but he also inadvertently gave us spam and script kiddies and phishing and 419 scams and and and ... :P

As every audiophile knows...

[TeknoHog]

a nice, warm-sounding amplifier is not something made of transistors. It's a series of tubes.

Re:As every audiophile knows...

[Cadallin]

The only thing I can come up with is their resilience to voltage spikes, cosmic rays...

This is actually related to one of the major reasons: Power Handling. Vacuum tubes are still used for High Power transmitter amplifiers, much greater than 1kw.

Also: The "Virtual Tube" DSP amps do not sound the same, regardless of what a tone-deaf Electrical Engineer says. Musicians are "Audiophiles" in the derogatory sense you intend, although they usually audiophiles in the true sense of being lovers of sound and music. They may not know EE, but that doesn't mean they don't know anything. Skilled musicians DO know music, and there is a reason they prefer tube amps for Guitars, Bass, etc.

rewritten history

[Bender_]

The field effect transistor, the device that is relevant today, was invented and patented in 1926 by
Julius Edgar Lilienfeld. Due to his patents many claims by Bell Labs were thrown out.

The device that was invented by Bell Labs in 1947 was a point contact transistor. An inherently fragile device not fit for mass production. The same device was invented in parallel in France by two german Scientists: Welker and Matere see here.

Schockley himself did however invent the bipolar junction transistor a couple of years later. This invention was truly a streak of genius as it is the most complex of all devices.

So, thanks to american corporate giants history was rewritten again.

The Transisor's Significance

[rm999]

It's a little hard to put the importance of the transistor into perspective. One way of looking at it is about 3 billion transistors are made worldwide - a second. Imagine how different the world would be if these transistors were still made manually with vacuum tubes (or not made at all.)

While you read this post, about 20 transistors were manufactured for every person in the world.

Obligatory quote from 1947

[ichigo 2.0]

"Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of these!"

Re:As every camper knows...

[Fear the Clam]

A nice, warm sleeping bag in a tent that you carried in your backpack is better than any hotel room.

Right up until the next morning when you wish you had a hot shower and room service.