"The Road to the Transistor"

[gar]

140913-2307 EDT

Going thru some papers I found a copy I had made several years ago of an essay titled "The Road to the Transistor". You can find a copy at http://www.jmargolin.com/history/trans.htm

My first association with a transistor was in the summer of 1952. While on active duty in the USNR, at the end of my enlistment I was for a while working in a lab at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard that was working on instrumentation for measurement of the parameters of point contact transistors. My project was on vacuum tubes, but I had knowledge of the transistor work, and how Western Electric made the point contact transistor.

At night back in my YMCA room I was able to make a point contact transistor from a 1N34 diode. From this I made a working oscillator. I still have the homemade transistor and one of these days I may see it it still works.

.

 

[iwire]

140913-2307 EDT

Going thru some papers I found a copy I had made several years ago of an essay titled "The Road to the Transistor". You can find a copy at http://www.jmargolin.com/history/trans.htm

My first association with a transistor was in the summer of 1952. While on active duty in the USNR, at the end of my enlistment I was for a while working in a lab at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard that was working on instrumentation for measurement of the parameters of point contact transistors. My project was on vacuum tubes, but I had knowledge of the transistor work, and how Western Electric made the point contact transistor.

At night back in my YMCA room I was able to make a point contact transistor from a 1N34 diode. From this I made a working oscillator. I still have the homemade transistor and one of these days I may see it it still works.

.

Thanks for sharing the link and the story.

 

[Besoeker]

140913-2307 EDT

Going thru some papers I found a copy I had made several years ago of an essay titled "The Road to the Transistor". You can find a copy at http://www.jmargolin.com/history/trans.htm

My first association with a transistor was in the summer of 1952. While on active duty in the USNR, at the end of my enlistment I was for a while working in a lab at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard that was working on instrumentation for measurement of the parameters of point contact transistors. My project was on vacuum tubes, but I had knowledge of the transistor work, and how Western Electric made the point contact transistor.

At night back in my YMCA room I was able to make a point contact transistor from a 1N34 diode. From this I made a working oscillator. I still have the homemade transistor and one of these days I may see it it still works.

As the iWire fellow says, it's and interesting story and an interesting article.
Like you, I'm quite an old chap and, during the space my professional lifetime, I've seen the transition from vacuum tube technology to semiconductors.
And the huge leaps that have been made in that field.
Thyratrons and mercury arc rectifiers, or mercury archaic as my late great friend Tommy called them, moved over for SCRs or thyristors, and GTOs.
Inverters where we used fast turn off SCRs are now all IGBT technology.

Huge strides in just a few decades.

 

[Brian S.]

Bell labs

Bell labs

Funny you found that. I am doing renovation work in the bell labs building that invented it. there water tower out front is shaped like a transistor. Good read