Like transistors? You must -- you're using a few million (or billion) right now just reading this sentence. But it's actually difficult to overstate the transistor's importance since its invention exactly 60 years ago today by super nerd gods John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley --
everything changed when solid state circuits were finally able to replace mechanical relays and vacuum tubes. There's little doubt electronics and technology as we know it today are only possible because of this fundamental discovery, although 60 years on we can only seem to navel gaze about what sorts of real jobs we'd all have if we weren't just spending our days obsessing about the gadgets these transistors power.
posted Dec 16th 2007 8:58PM
I thought it was from the All Spark Cube :)
Good answer.
I thought it was all reverse engineered from the Federation Time Ship Aeon..
As is stated fact, transistors and all mordern electronic devices were reversed engineered from MB1 aka Megatron when he was discovered frozen in the polar icecaps. All hail Megatron.
It's actually called NBE-1 (Non Biological Entity - 1)...but yeah, whatever. I shouldn't even know this.
And where were they invented? Just down the street from me in Allentown, PA at Bell Labs on Union Blvd.
You live in Allentown? I live in Kimberton (near Phoenixville and Pottstown) we're not too far from eachother! Happy B-Day Transistors!
I hear a play date between nerds being scheduled.
Heed my words, transistor will reach it maximum speeeds in the next 10 years, and we still wont be able to muster up a way to use quantum pc to at the speeds of silicon. Only way out for now is processors with 100 million cores, or a silicon with no viscosity :D that way heat would never be generated.
Aw, how can you tell the transistor that on its birthday? It's transistor's special day! Shame on you :p
Well, at least I can still send email, create a budget, surf the net, listen to my music and play starcraft on my 600 Mhz Celeron. What amazing things other than that could we do with 100 million cores on a processor?
Well, we can still play Doom. 100 million copies at the same time.
Wow, you read the CNN article too!
It's a good thing we don't use silicon then. Check out the use of Hafnium in the Penryn architecture. Then check out the fourth successor to Penryn called Sandy Bridge.
(Penryn > Nehalem > Westmere > Sandy Bridge)
"Intel's plans are to introduce new microarchitectures every two years, so this processor should debut in 2010. In keeping with its tick-tock principle, the 22 nm shrink of Sandy Bridge is due out in 2011.
According to a presentation made by Intel in December 2006, Sandy Bridge is planned to run at 4 GHz and feature 4 to 8 cores. Sandy Bridge may possibly feature up to 32 cores. Sandy Bridge will also feature 32 KB L1 cache/core, 512 KB L2 cache/core, and 2-3 MB L3 cache (most likely shared, but it may be per core). Other features include 64 GB/s memory bandwidth and a 17 GB/s QuickPath link. The presentation also mentions that Sandy Bridge will be capable of up to 28 GFLOPS/core, which would give a total of 112-224 GFLOPS/processor."
No wonder AMD is getting the crap kicked out of them when Intel is working four iterations ahead of current technologies.
I'm glad they invented transistors! long live the gate and the electrons flowing thru!!
It's hard to believe how far technology has come! I remember blowing up a few transistors in high school electronics class!
My life would be extremely boring if transistors hadn't been invented...
Either that or someone would have invented something 10 times better and I would be 10 times happier...
You wouldn't know you were 10 times happier though, you would just think it was 'normal'. You would also probably be thinking there is something else that could have been invented 10x better and 10x faster :) Remember, without evil we wouldn't know what good is!
Ya you're probably right...
Maybe they should just invent something 10x faster now...
Transistor is one fertile bastard, just look how many of them there are only 60 years later.
I have this bizarre impulse to make some sort of reference to a shadowy being which has control OVER us... something like a medieval LORD or some sort. hmmm... odd indeed. Well happy B-Day transistor!
Sex. Do it for the kids.
@Clinton
Lol.
Kids in the backseat cause accidents. Accidents in the backseat cause kids.
I want to build a transistor like that picture! I am a nerd! help me!
Have alot of gallium arsenide and germanium lying around?
Thanks to the transistor we are able to enjoy pornography in the virtual digital 3D form, although I still prefer my porn in the more natural and realistic analog 3D form.
Anime form.
Happy B-Day, and Thank You, Thank You, Thank You!
But, if you feel up to it...
http://www.appliedmaterials.com/htmat/animated.html
They older they get the better they look.
And they get smaller instead of growing up :-D
60 years! Better make sure he has signed up for Medicare...
Anyways, Happy B'Day!
Why did certain group of the human race get all the brains?
For anyone who cares,
The device pictured is the Bipolar Junction Transistor (BJT) which is the first mass produced solid-state transistor. The Field Effect Transistor (FET), which is what's in all our shiny devices, was patented about 25 years before the BJT, but it was not widely used until after the success of the BJT because the BJT was easier to produce.
The super nerd gods you mention in this article are actually not the inventors of the transistor technology. The starting shot gave Julius Edgar Lilienfeld, a German physicist in 1928. In 1934 German physicist Dr. Oskar Heil patented another field-effect transistor.
John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley had built operational versions from Lilienfeld's patents, yet they never referenced this work...
That sounds a bit different, huh?
Honor to whom honor is due!
long live transistors
So, it was just a few months after the "Roswell Incident". I knew it was alien technology!
John Bardeen was my great uncle!
DYNOMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITE!
December 16 is also my mom's birthday lol.
Would it be possible to build a vacuum-tube NES? It would probably be the size of my house.
happy birth day