So young and yet so wise! The transistor is 75 years old this month, so lets take a look at some of the very first.
Join Team FranLab!!!! Become a patron and help support my YouTube Channel on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/frantone
#franlab #transistor #ieee
- Music by Fran Blanche -
Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
Join Team FranLab!!!! Become a patron and help support my YouTube Channel on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/frantone
#franlab #transistor #ieee
- Music by Fran Blanche -
Fran on Twitter - https://twitter.com/contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - http://www.frantone.com/designwritings/design_writings.html
FranArt Website - http://www.contourcorsets.com
Cat whisker crystal radio used galena.
I discovered germanium transistors once again and I was really surprised about really low voltage loss they have.
Merry Christmas Fran.
🎅🎁🎄🎎🎀🧸🛷❄⛄🎑🤶
I hope you have a wonderful new
year. Cheers from Canada 🙂
Coolest geek on the internet, bar none. Lub ya!
That RCA Logo is so, so beautiful.
I did not realize that they had made the first transistor that long ago. Thanks for the history lesson. I like this shorter format for a video when it is not necessary to do a deep discussion.
I love how you can see the internals of the RCA transistor in that paperweight! RCA transistors weren't commercially available until May 1953, and several other manufacturers had transistors available for sale before that. Raytheon was selling their CK718/CK721/CK722 line from late 1952, and the CK703 was in the 1950 edition of Radio's Master catalog. General Electric was selling their G11 and G11A since at least June 1952. CBS had a line of 5 different transistors for sale by January of 1953. National Union was selling 3 different transistors by April of 1953. Plus Western Electric had been supplying transistors since at least 1952, but only to the military and Bell Telephone.
The very first Led was made in the early sixties. It cost two hundred and fifty dollars. It was used to light up Rudolf's the Reindeer's nose in the Christmas special.
Still have a new in plastic Sinclair 15W amplifier, with the unmarked Mullard reject transistors that Sinclair used to make them with. Never opened or connected, as those transistors may actually work, though the odds are, like many of the early Sinclair products, that they have long since died. But till them it is in a quantum state of "possibly working" till collapsed. Almost sure the electrolytic capacitors are very much open circuit, 50 odd years makes that a near certainty.
My first transistors included a germanium power transistor in the large round package almost the size of a quarter. I forget the package type. I think it had a mounting stud. I made a transistorized model railroad throttle out of an article in Model Railroader magazine. And it worked well with one issue. The transistor had horrible thermal runaway even though I did fashion a halfway reasonable heat sink with some pieces of aluminum (and maybe "halfway" was the problem although germanium power transistors were known for this problem). I found that if I held a wet wadded up paper towel on the top of the transistor, that kept it cool enough (although the water was sizzling) for it to work. I'm vaguely remembering that a silicon power transistor for the application was more costly. This was about 1964.
There was a sort of "we have more transistors in our radio" competition for a while and you would see "8 transistor" or "12 transistor" or similar claims that seemed unreasonably high. If you opened one, you saw that some transistors only had two leads connected. They were using some as a diodes but still adding them to the total transistor count.
Weren't galena crystals (PbS – lead ore) used for diodes?
The 1st transistors (Ge PNP) I bought was in 1963 or 1964, was from Lafayette Radio Electronics, still have those in my collection. About 60 year old transistors, I was in 7th or 8th grade at the time!