June 30, 1948 -- A Day on which the world changed

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Exactly 62 years ago, on June 30, 1948 Bell Telephone Laboratory announced the creation and release of a radical new technology, the field effect transistor. In fact it was the first time the public heard the word transistor. The device was developed by a team at Bell Labs headed by Robert Shockley but the scientific breakthrough was accomplished by two physicists Bardeen and Brittain, who applied the quantum theory of semi-conductors to produce an amplifier that required very little energy to operate. Once the problems of reliability had been solved, miniature low energy electron flows could be managed.

It is very hard for many of you young folks to realize just how crude electrical devices were prior to the transistor. The only devices for regulating electron flow was the vacuum tube which was a hot energy eating device very little different from an incandescent light bulb. Telephone switching equipment was positively late stage Victorian technology with racks and racks of slow moving, energy chomping rotating electro-mechanical relay switches, very little different than the electromagnets that Samuel Morse used in his telegraph in 1843.

Radios and early model T.V. sets were energy eating, blazing hot devices and electromagnetic fields required millions of times as much energy to produce as they do now.

Sixty two years and the technology is like something from the Far Future compared to what it was then.

I was just a kid at the time, twelve years old, barely post pubescent and I lived in a world in which there were no really high speed, low energy compact computers. Programmable computers at that time were vacuum tube controlled monsters as they would be for another ten years (major league transistor computers come out in the middle fifties). There were no pocket calculators and accountants used gear grinding clanking desk calculators that would not have looked out of place in Victorian England eighty years prior. To get that retro feel see the move -Brazil- and look at the scenes with the teletypes.

Times they are a-changin'

ruveyn

Last edited by ruveyn on 30 Jun 2010, 1:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I love reading facts like this, because early technology is one of my special interests. I love looking at images of vintage phones, radios and TVs, when WP is down. You've really made my day. I'm a lot happier, now.

Transformation topic

I am not young, but I remember the big buzz on transistor radios in the 60s. Instant on device!

Vacuum tubes were clumsy, cumbersome and hot hardware, but were easily fixed. (I was fascinated by the tubes. and how they glowed.) I suppose the last tube to disappear was the picture tube in TVs and monitors, though I still have an old tube TV but the monitor had to go due to the problem with lead and headaches. LCD is much better.

Great history lesson, R.

yeah, i wish we are as good with atoms as we are with electrons. binary world is good for calculations but not for much else.

Funny how transistors were developed late 40s, but didn't make the open consumer marketplace until the mid sixties. I remember seeing someone listening to a baseball game on a transistor radio for the first time when I was around five or six years old.

Now the new iDevice is on the street 30 days after the prototype is complete.

I still marvel over the fact that after spending years compiling music libraries for radio stations of every type and format, I now carry more music in my pocket than the entire libraries of all those radio stations combined, in a device smaller than those transistor radios.


Do they even make wind-up wristwatches anymore?

The earliest transistors were NOT integrated circuits. They were rather large (about the size of a peanut). However they required much less energy than vacuum tubes. Integrated circuits were not developed until the early or mid sixties. At that point the Transistor Revolution made its full impact on the design and production of electronic devices.

In addition there was the issue of quality control Most of the early transistors were duds. They did not have the write amount of "doping" (impurities) to work properly. Getting the quality right for integrated circuits was the big hump that had to be crossed before transistors could really be used effectively. Integrated circuits also brought the cost of switching elements down to a very small amount so that large circuits could be produced at a reasonable cost.

ruveyn

ruveyn

They still use vacuum tubes in high power applications, microwave oven microwave tubes, and some audio applications.

Because I admire the times before I was born and am always very interested on what things were like then, what would you say is your greatest memory regarding technology or technological advances, besides transistors? It's awesome to hear people around your age talking about life before the PC, or color TV, or high fructose corn syrup replacing sugar in soft drinks (:P).

Transistors made their greatest effect after integrated circuits were developed. Integrated circuits reduced the power requirements and decreased heat production. The size reduction made devices possible that could not be designed with non-integrated components.

ruveyn