Transistors!

[FastEddieB]

YouTube just suggested this video from 1953 to me:

Given that I was born in 1949, I was about 4 years old when transistors became a thing.

In my late childhood, an object of lust was a transistor radio - the more transistors the better! I had one very similar to this one - and many others over the years.

How far we’ve come. I had to look it up, but the processor in an iPhone 12 has 11.8 billion transistors! I wonder if those Bell Labs scientists had any idea what they were setting in motion.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

YouTube just suggested this video from 1953 to me:

Given that I was born in 1949, I was about 4 years old when transistors became a thing.

In my late childhood, an object of lust was a transistor radio - the more transistors the better! I had one very similar to this one - and many others over the years.

How far we’ve come. I had to look it up, but the processor in an iPhone 12 has 11.8 billion transistors! I wonder if those Bell Labs scientists had any idea what they were setting in motion.

Perhaps not at the time, but they lived long enough to see where things were going, if not quite to the technology we have now. They lived into the 1980's.

 

[Joe_B1]

The first quantum device!

 

[Pilawt]

 

[A1Topgun]

YouTube just suggested this video from 1953 to me:

Given that I was born in 1949, I was about 4 years old when transistors became a thing.

In my late childhood, an object of lust was a transistor radio - the more transistors the better! I had one very similar to this one - and many others over the years.

How far we’ve come. I had to look it up, but the processor in an iPhone 12 has 11.8 billion transistors! I wonder if those Bell Labs scientists had any idea what they were setting in motion.

Wow! A Sony Six Transistor Radio!
I bought one of these with money from a paper delivery route, I still have it! I wonder what it is worth now!

 

[chartbundle]

They're more than meets the eye.

Wait, wrong component.

 

[A1Topgun]

Bought a Raytheon CK722 transistor from a Popular Mechanics ad and built my first transistor radio. Oh, cr@p I'm showing my age.

 

[Dana]

I'm a few years younger than FastEddie, but advertising the number of transistors was still a thing in the 1960s... I had this one, also six transistors:

 

[Arrow76R]

I used a CK 768 for my radio!!

 

[Ghery]

My first transistor radio only had 2 transistors and external ground and antenna wires. I remember when radios bragged about the number of transistors they had. 6 was a typical number, but I had (probably still have) a radio with 8. If I recall correctly the schematic (affixed to the inside of the case) showed that 2 of them didn't really do anything.

 

[vkhosid]

Wow! A Sony Six Transistor Radio!
I bought one of these with money from a paper delivery route, I still have it! I wonder what it is worth now!

The paper route?

 

[jsstevens]

My first transistor radio only had 2 transistors and external ground and antenna wires. I remember when radios bragged about the number of transistors they had. 6 was a typical number, but I had (probably still have) a radio with 8. If I recall correctly the schematic (affixed to the inside of the case) showed that 2 of them didn't really do anything.

But marketing folks know that n+1 > n even if n doesn't matter. n+2 is twice as better.

 

[kgruber]

This was my first...........in 1955. "7" transistors

 

[asicer]

Just how much did transistors cost back in the day?

 

[kgruber]

 

[wsuffa]

Need a few with valves, too.

 

[flyingbrit]

Just how much did transistors cost back in the day?

The CK722 cost $7.60 in 1953:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histo...-cost junction,in popular books and magazines.

 

[flyingbrit]

Need a few with valves, too.

 

[woywoyboy]

My first transistor radio prominently claimed to have nine transistors in it! Real state of the art. That little radio helped spark my interest in engineering, and a little over a decade later I was co-designer of a small NMOS IC with, well, a lot more than nine transistors in it .

 

[A1Topgun]

The paper route?

Yes! Back in the days before technology took over, people read a daily news paper, maybe two. Th paper was delivered to your home by a teenager and it was called a "Paper Route". Every week the "carrier" would collect the money for for the news papers delivered, pay the newspaper publisher a discounted rate and keep the remained as their wage. I believe the carrier earned $.02 for a daily and $.05 for the Sunday edition.

Back in the days!

 

[FastEddieB]

Yes! Back in the days before technology took over, people read a daily news paper, maybe two.

I think you missed vkhosid's little joke. Unless you still have your paper route.

But, yes, I had one too. Early morning one - the Washingon Post- before school. To a group of apartment buildings in Silver Spring, MD, making it a bit easier once I rode my bike up, unbundled the papers, and began inside deliveries. Hard work but it was nice having extra money.

 

[Ventucky Red]

My father gets a call from one of his Air Corp buddies in 1965 telling him to bet the farm on this company he worked at called Texas Instruments.. My dad remembering The Depression decides to keep his money safe, and continued investing in real estate.

One of those woulda, shoulda coulda moments..

In Boy Scouts I had built a crystal radio from a Lafayette kit... pretty cool.

Paper routes... had 55 dailies, and 80 Sundays - Philadelphia Bulletin, The Sundays were a killer especially because I had a lot hills... s

 

[Daleandee]

A serious paper route bike had three baskets. One on each side of the rear tire and one in front of the handlebars. You might also have to carry a few in a sling over the shoulder:

 

[Cap'n Jack]

A serious paper route bike had three baskets. One on each side of the rear tire and one in front of the handlebars. You might also have to carry a few in a sling over the shoulder:

This one is more cool :

 

[IK04]

The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs in 1947. Shockley had earlier theorized a field-effect amplifier made from germanium and silicon, but he failed to build such a working device, before eventually using germanium to invent the point-contact transistor.

The "traitorous Eight," who were the original Shockley employees, became unhappy with his management of the company, turned to Sherman Fairchild's Fairchild Camera and Instrument company. The Fairchild Semiconductor division was started with plans to make silicon transistors.

The location of that first Fairchild site in Mountain View, CA was rebuilt and torn down and eventually became a produce store. There is now a huge campus located there with giant transistors growing out of the sidewalk.

A couple of those guys, along with Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law) founded Intel in 1968. Their original shop is now the location of a fast food drive-through...

Sorry for the nerdfest, but I grew up near there and remember a lot of those locations before "Silicon Valley" was a thing.

 

[Ghery]

Some of those "hollow state" devices warmed up about as fast as transistors did. We had (until my dad gave it to a church rummage sale) a Zenith TransOceanic receiver (AM and shortwave) that was a tube rig, but came on almost immediately when you turned it on. Never did have a battery pack for it (too much money). I've seen that radio one other place, in the radio room museum on the Queen Mary.

 

[wilkersk]

I had a GE transistor radio in the '70s. What I really wanted, but couldn't afford was a Grundig worldband radio. Then all of a sudden, there were boom boxes and Walkman, and....

 

[GaryM]

The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs in 1947.

The home site of Bell Labs is easy to spot from the air, and when south of Morristown it's a good visual marker for where the Newark Bravo 70/30 shelf becomes the 70/18 shelf.

 

[wsuffa]

Some of those "hollow state" devices warmed up about as fast as transistors did. We had (until my dad gave it to a church rummage sale) a Zenith TransOceanic receiver (AM and shortwave) that was a tube rig, but came on almost immediately when you turned it on. Never did have a battery pack for it (too much money). I've seen that radio one other place, in the radio room museum on the Queen Mary.

I recall Nuvistors were pretty fast, too.

 

[Ghery]

I recall Nuvistors were pretty fast, too.

True, but the Zenith didn't use them. Just tubes with low power requirements for the filaments to preserve battery life.

 

[Cap'n Jack]

The home site of Bell Labs is easy to spot from the air, and when south of Morristown it's a good visual marker for where the Newark Bravo 70/30 shelf becomes the 70/18 shelf.

"former home site" is a better description.

The first working transistor was a point-contact transistor invented by John Bardeen, Walter Houser Brattain and William Shockley at Bell Labs in 1947. Shockley had earlier theorized a field-effect amplifier made from germanium and silicon, but he failed to build such a working device, before eventually using germanium to invent the point-contact transistor.

The "traitorous Eight," who were the original Shockley employees, became unhappy with his management of the company, turned to Sherman Fairchild's Fairchild Camera and Instrument company. The Fairchild Semiconductor division was started with plans to make silicon transistors.

The location of that first Fairchild site in Mountain View, CA was rebuilt and torn down and eventually became a produce store. There is now a huge campus located there with giant transistors growing out of the sidewalk.

A couple of those guys, along with Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law) founded Intel in 1968. Their original shop is now the location of a fast food drive-through...

Sorry for the nerdfest, but I grew up near there and remember a lot of those locations before "Silicon Valley" was a thing.

The point contact transistor was an accident, but a fortuitous one. Shockley was in Chicago when that experiment happened, but from that work, he came up with the junction transistor. A fellow named Russell Ohl came up with the PN junction used in diodes about 17 years prior to the transistor.

Ref: Buderi, R. The Invention that Changed the World

Too bad companies don't have R&D departments anymore that let people do basic research. I think Google does, but I don't know of any others.

 

[wsuffa]

Too bad companies don't have R&D departments anymore that let people do basic research. I think Google does, but I don't know of any others.

Now I s all about letting universities do it with government grants. Gotta keep shareholders happy.

 

[vkhosid]

I think you missed vkhosid's little joke. Unless you still have your paper route.

But, yes, I had one too. Early morning one - the Washingon Post- before school. To a group of apartment buildings in Silver Spring, MD, making it a bit easier once I rode my bike up, unbundled the papers, and began inside deliveries. Hard work but it was nice having extra money.

I was worried there for a second...

 

[Cap'n Jack]

Now I s all about letting universities do it with government grants. Gotta keep shareholders happy.

I wish there was a way to repay the government if a grant, or series of grants, leads to in invention that profits the university.

 

[X3 Skier]

Used to ride on the dropped tailgate of my buddy’s Dad’s 54 Chevy Station Wagon. The Buddy flung papers to the left side of the street while I heaved to the right side. He was a lefty and I was a righty. The biggest challenge was getting the right paper of the two evening dailies to the right house.

Just to prove to myself I still retain some long ago skills, I occasionally “box” a paper and fire at the trash can. Lot easier today since the number of pages is so much lower.

Cheers

 

[DaleB]

I wish there was a way to repay the government if a grant, or series of grants, leads to in invention that profits the university.

What, so they can have another shot at wasting it completely?

 

[Cap'n Jack]

What, so they can have another shot at wasting it completely?

Huh?

 

[Doug Reid]

 

[DaleB]

Huh?

I wasn't clear, I guess. I'm multitasking. I took your post to mean universities repaying government grants if a government funded project results in profits for the university. Since that grant tax money (tax dollars) would not have been utterly wasted, giving it back to the government would give the government a second chance to do what it seems to do best...

Waste it.

 

[timrb]

What, so they can have another shot at wasting it completely?

We have some friends who are high level professors and researchers in marine biology at UC Santa Cruz (CA). They are constantly applying for grants, and when they get one, the university forces them to share a percentage with the departments that peddle the worthless degrees. Otherwise those departments would disappear, since no one in their right mind would give them any money.

Tim