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 ...
Interesting piece of trivia...
Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, an Austro-Hungarian physicist invented the MOSFET in 1925 and the electrolytic capacitor in the 1920’s. He filed several patents describing the construction and operation of transistors as well as many features of modern transistors. When Brattain, Bardeen and Shockley tried to get a patent on their device, most of their claims were rejected due to the Lilienfeld patents.
Speaking of the transistor, there is now a drive to prevent a park being named after its lead inventor, William Shockley, because of his views on race. Pretty soon the leftists will try to remove or rewrite the first few centuries of the U.S.’s history.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125167291476670823.html
No doubt reverse-engineered from the Roswell crash of the Radio Shack delivery saucer from Alpha Centauri.
Coast to Coast?
How far we’ve come. Got my headphones on, plugged in to my laptop.
Yup Coast to Coast. I refrained mentioning them by name to protect the guilty, but yeah.
The CK722 was my first transistor, sometime in the mid 50s, followed by the 2N107..Wow, I am getting old, but remember some things :(
Those people have way, way too much spare time. But it’s fun to listen to occasionally.
Do you realize that you are arguing against a theory that transistors were reverse-engineered from the crash remnants of an alien spaceship?
I think I’ve heard one of those shows. Nutty.
American Computer Company had a story about the transistor and Roswell in the late 90’s. Below link is for your entertainment.
http://www.american-computer.com/
(Note: Web site is archived and some links may or may work.)
a theory that transistors were reverse-engineered from the crash remnants of an alien spaceship?
Don’t be silly, it they were they’d be called “Roswells”.
Al Gore invented the internet and now the NYT invents the name “transistor”. Gee, I’m not so sure about this. Wouldn’t it have been published in scientific papers, proposals, journals, etc., first? Just guessing here, don’t clobber me.
The NYT didn’t invent the name “transistor” as it was named that by the developers at Bell Labs as a compound from the words “transfer resistor” meaning that the device seems to have an output resistance that varied in accordance with voltage drive to the base. (Greatly simplifying here).
The NYT just used the word “transistor” as it was given to them by Bell Labs. This is cited, however, as the first public appearance of the word.
Jack
who also recalls his first CK722, built into a code practice oscillator when working on his first amateur radio license.
Always rhought Bell Labs invented it?
Was an AE in the CG ..Hardest course I ever took was Tran Theory at NAS Jax...nothing made sence it all just “was”..PNP,NPN etc geshhhh
All those Valance, J shells and K shells. L0L
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