Crystal Fire

Crystal Fire PDF Author: Michael Riordan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393318517
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work tells the human story of the process of invention that led to the invention of the transistor.

Crystal Fire

Crystal Fire PDF Author: Michael Riordan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393041248
Category : Computers
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
It's hard to imagine any device more crucial to modern life than the microchip and the transistor from which it sprang. Every waking hour of every day people benefit from its use in cellular phones, computers, radios, TVs, and ATMs. This eloquent retelling of the story behind the invention of the transistor recounts how pride and jealousy coupled with scientific aspirations ignited the greatest technological explosion in history. Photos & drawings.

Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age

Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age PDF Author: Michael Riordan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324074841
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book Here

Book Description
"Without the invention of the transistor, I'm quite sure that the PC would not exist as we know it today."—Bill Gates On December 16, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, physicists at Bell Laboratories, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of germanium. The power flowing from the germanium far exceeded what went in; in that moment the transistor was invented and the Information Age was born. No other devices have been as crucial to modern life as the transistor and the microchip it spawned, but the story of the science and personalities that made these inventions possible has not been fully told until now. Crystal Fire fills this gap and carries the story forward. William Shockley, Bell Labs' team leader and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize with Brattain and Bardeen for the discovery, grew obsessed with the transistor and went on to become the father of Silicon Valley. Here is a deeply human story about the process of invention — including the competition and economic aspirations involved — all part of the greatest technological explosion in history. The intriguing history of the transistor — its inventors, physics, and stunning impact on society and the economy — unfolds here in a richly told tale."—Science News "Thoroughly accessible to lay readers as well as the techno-savvy. . . . [A] fine book."—Publishers Weekly

Silicon, From Sand to Chips, Volume 1

Silicon, From Sand to Chips, Volume 1 PDF Author: Alain Vignes
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1394297602
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 260

Get Book Here

Book Description
Silicon is the material of the digital revolution, of solar energy and of digital photography, which has revolutionized both astronomy and medical imaging. It is also the material of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), indispensable components of smart objects. The discovery of the electronic and optoelectronic properties of germanium and silicon during the Second World War, followed by the invention of the transistor, ushered in the digital age. Although the first transistors were made from germanium, silicon eventually became the preferred material for these technologies. Silicon, From Sand to Chips 1 traces the history of the discoveries, inventions and developments in basic components and chips that these two materials enabled one after the other. The book is divided into two volumes and this first volume is devoted to basic microelectronic components.

Conquering the Electron

Conquering the Electron PDF Author: Derek Cheung
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493049933
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 361

Get Book Here

Book Description
Conquering the Electron offers readers a true and engaging history of the world of electronics, beginning with the discoveries of static electricity and magnetism and ending with the creation of the smartphone and the iPad. This book shows the interconnection of each advance to the next on the long journey to our modern-day technologies. Exploring the combination of genius, infighting, and luck that powered the creation of today's electronic age, Conquering the Electron debunks the hero worship so often plaguing the stories of great advances. Want to know how AT&T’s Bell Labs developed semiconductor technology—and how its leading scientists almost came to blows in the process? Want to understand how radio and television work—and why RCA drove their inventors to financial ruin and early graves? Conquering the Electron offers these stories and more, presenting each revolutionary technological advance right alongside blow-by-blow personal battles that all too often took place.

The Electronics Revolution

The Electronics Revolution PDF Author: J.B. Williams
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319490885
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is about how electronics, computing, and telecommunications have profoundly changed our lives – the way we work, live, and play. It covers a myriad of topics from the invention of the fundamental devices, and integrated circuits, through radio and television, to computers, mobile telephones and GPS. Today our lives are ruled by electronics as they control the home and computers dominate the workspace. We walk around with mobile phones and communicate by email. Electronics didn’t exist until into the twentieth century. The industrial revolution is the term usually applied to the coming of steam, railways and the factory system. In the twentieth century, it is electronics that has changed the way we gather our information, entertain ourselves, communicate and work. This book demonstrates that this is, in fact, another revolution.

From Insight to Innovation

From Insight to Innovation PDF Author: David P. Billington, Jr.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262359685
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Get Book Here

Book Description
The engineering ideas behind key twentieth-century technical innovations, from great dams and highways to the jet engine, the transistor, the microchip, and the computer. Technology is essential to modern life, yet few of us are technology-literate enough to know much about the engineering that underpins it. In this book, David P. Billington, Jr., offers accessible accounts of the key twentieth-century engineering innovations that brought us into the twenty-first century. Billington examines a series of engineering advances--from Hoover Dam and jet engines to the transistor, the microchip, the computer, and the internet--and explains how they came about and how they work.

Advanced Materials Innovation

Advanced Materials Innovation PDF Author: Sanford L. Moskowitz
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470508922
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 487

Get Book Here

Book Description
Through detailed case studies of the most important advanced material creations of the latter 20th and early 21st century, the author explores the role of the field of advanced materials in the technological and economic activity today, with implications to the innovation process in general. A comprehensive study that encompasses the three major categories of advanced material technologies, i.e., Structural Materials (metals and polymers), Functional Materials (transistor, microchip and semiconductor laser) and Hybrid and New Forms of Matter (liquid crystals and nanomaterials). Extensive use of primary sources, including unpublished interviews with the scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs on the front lines of advanced materials creation Original approach to case study narrative, emphasizing interaction between the advanced material process, perceived risk and directing and accelerating breakthrough technology

Jump-Starting America

Jump-Starting America PDF Author: Jonathan Gruber
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541762509
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 344

Get Book Here

Book Description
The untold story of how America once created the most successful economy the world has ever seen—and how we can do it again. The American economy glitters on the outside, but the reality is quite different. Job opportunities and economic growth are increasingly concentrated in a few crowded coastal enclaves. Corporations and investors are disproportionately developing technologies that benefit the wealthiest Americans in the most prosperous areas -- and destroying middle class jobs elsewhere. To turn this tide, we must look to a brilliant and all-but-forgotten American success story and embark on a plan that will create the industries of the future -- and the jobs that go with them. Beginning in 1940, massive public investment generated breakthroughs in science and technology that first helped win WWII and then created the most successful economy the world has ever seen. Private enterprise then built on these breakthroughs to create new industries -- such as radar, jet engines, digital computers, mobile telecommunications, life-saving medicines, and the internet-- that became the catalyst for broader economic growth that generated millions of good jobs. We lifted almost all boats, not just the yachts. Jonathan Gruber and Simon Johnson tell the story of this first American growth engine and provide the blueprint for a second. It's a visionary, pragmatic, sure-to-be controversial plan that will lead to job growth and a new American economy in places now left behind.

Crystal Fire

Crystal Fire PDF Author: Michael Riordan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393318517
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 370

Get Book Here

Book Description
This work tells the human story of the process of invention that led to the invention of the transistor.

The Idea Factory

The Idea Factory PDF Author: Jon Gertner
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143122797
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Get Book Here

Book Description
The definitive history of America’s greatest incubator of innovation and the birthplace of some of the 20th century’s most influential technologies “Filled with colorful characters and inspiring lessons . . . The Idea Factory explores one of the most critical issues of our time: What causes innovation?” —Walter Isaacson, The New York Times Book Review “Compelling . . . Gertner's book offers fascinating evidence for those seeking to understand how a society should best invest its research resources.” —The Wall Street Journal From its beginnings in the 1920s until its demise in the 1980s, Bell Labs-officially, the research and development wing of AT&T-was the biggest, and arguably the best, laboratory for new ideas in the world. From the transistor to the laser, from digital communications to cellular telephony, it's hard to find an aspect of modern life that hasn't been touched by Bell Labs. In The Idea Factory, Jon Gertner traces the origins of some of the twentieth century's most important inventions and delivers a riveting and heretofore untold chapter of American history. At its heart this is a story about the life and work of a small group of brilliant and eccentric men-Mervin Kelly, Bill Shockley, Claude Shannon, John Pierce, and Bill Baker-who spent their careers at Bell Labs. Today, when the drive to invent has become a mantra, Bell Labs offers us a way to enrich our understanding of the challenges and solutions to technological innovation. Here, after all, was where the foundational ideas on the management of innovation were born.