Transistors: An Unfulfilled Promise

(1962)

> ABOUT fourteen years have elapsed since the invention at Bell Telephone Laboratories of the transistor, a device whose promise as a sophisticated amplifier has yet to be fully realized in the high-fidelity industry.

Moral: good things take time.

Want to know the impact of AI, or self-driving vehicles, or robotics, or gene editing? Check in 2040.

Subsidiary moral: the new thing probably won't find it's greatest use where you expect.

Yeah, and whatever happened to the supposed efficiency of multi-level logic in integrated circuits? CMOS processes might be capable of a whole new level of performance if they used base 64 with multi-level transistors. Not sure if I'm joking, does anyone know?

Did it really take more than a decade for the audio industry to figure out how to get linear response from a transistor? Actually, it sounds like it took a while to develop higher power transistors. Vacuum tube amplifiers are still popular in the music industry.

Some early transistors were microphonic. Those Japanese tin can transistors. Maybe some current transistors/IC's are also? There's a security vulnerability to look into!