Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Build your own Big Question
Via the immensely valuable American Radio History library, a 1954 book on transistors.
At that time the device was still pretty much custom-made, not yet in full quantity production. For an ordinary experimenter, commercial transistors were essentially unavailable, so the book shows how to build your own!
Germanium diodes were commercially available, so the author details the process of disassembling three diodes to make one transistor.
Each diode is the modern version of a catwhisker detector.
Here's the original catwhisker:
And here's a live 1N34 germanium diode scanned:
The first diagram:
and the second:
Clearly an earlier experimenter could have developed the technique using the 1910-era catwhiskers. And in fact some did. They realized that two catwhiskers on the same galena crystal made amplification possible.
This debunks one Shared Lie and raises one Big Question.
Shared Lie: Quantum Quackery was necessary for the development of the transistor. Nonsense. Bell wasn't using QQ. Bell was just experimenting with this technique, which had already been seen in vague and tentative form. Bell had massive resources and a massive NEED for a miniature amplifier and switcher that could be fitted into cable relay points. And above all Bell had the world's best collection of thinkers and technicians.
Resources + need + techs = Working transistor.
Big Question: Why didn't anyone even try to develop the device in the '20s when the possibilities were visible? 
And here's a live 1N34 germanium diode scanned:
The first diagram:
and the second:
Clearly an earlier experimenter could have developed the technique using the 1910-era catwhiskers. And in fact some did. They realized that two catwhiskers on the same galena crystal made amplification possible.
This debunks one Shared Lie and raises one Big Question.
Shared Lie: Quantum Quackery was necessary for the development of the transistor. Nonsense. Bell wasn't using QQ. Bell was just experimenting with this technique, which had already been seen in vague and tentative form. Bell had massive resources and a massive NEED for a miniature amplifier and switcher that could be fitted into cable relay points. And above all Bell had the world's best collection of thinkers and technicians.
Resources + need + techs = Working transistor.
Big Question: Why didn't anyone even try to develop the device in the '20s when the possibilities were visible? Labels: Shared Lie
¶ 10:27 AM
