Re: Watching the Economy Crumble



On Wed, 10 Aug 2005, Russell.Martin@xxxxxxx wrote:

BMJ wrote:
Russell.Martin@xxxxxxx wrote: 
It somewhat depends on what one means by "fundamental".
Since "electronics" depends somewhat on "electrons", one
might argue that the "fundamental" discovery was that of
the electron. :-)

Electronic devices existed before the transistor. 

Well, then, quantum theory, or Franklin's observations on the
nature of electricity, or the smelting of copper. :-)


Vacuum tubes were around decades before xistors. :-)

 What was
fundamentally different about the latter was how it was constructed and
  operated.

Solid state devices (diodes) existed before transistors. 

Germanium diodes, and with wiskers.

Three
connection amplifying devices existed before transistors. 

Triodes. don't forget tetrodes, pentodes, and coverters.

It 
can be argued that transistors were merely a logical extension
of those more "fundamental" devices.


Maybe a parallel there.

 Developments in integrated circuits led to completely new
manufacturing methods, which were quickly adopted by industry.

Certainly the rather obvious commercial 
potential (and in some cases war efforts) pushed
electronics faster than some other fields.


More than anything, it was the space race that drove the electronic
industry.

You have not seen any of the popular magazines that existed well before the space race. Or, the big push for radio and TV, that also existed before the space race.

The biggest problem in going to the moon is weight and 
anything which could reduce the size of the payload and boosters was
worth considering.


The Russians beat this problem by just making very big boosters.

I've read that, and I'd agree as far as miniturization per se, but
commercial, consumer uses drove the industry before that and even
after that as far as revenue goes.

There were portable battery operated radios that did not use transistors. And, they were not very big, either. Many of them. I had one, once.

So we have a question of 
which came first, the revenue prospects or the cutting edge
technology.  I claim they are synergistic as far as advancing
the industry as a whole goes.  IOW the industry would not have
advanced as far if the only market for small devices was low
volume, high cost space applications, nor would it have advanced
as far if those devices had not been developed for space
applications.


I'm picking on everyone, today.


Ironically, that may have also driven the arms race.  Soviet electronics
were several years behind what was available in the west, leading to
larger packages for their missile guidance systems.  They needed larger
boosters to lift them, which led to the impression that the warheads
were larger as well (in both size and yield).


They were...57 megatons.


Maybe the Soviets built bigger rockets because they had to, but
the U.S. built smaller rockets because it couldn't even get those
to work at first.

US was a bunch of prima dona techno snobs who thought the Russkies were, without all this modern techno ***, unable to do squat. 1957 was a big wakeup.

Eventually our German scientists caught up with
their German scientists. :-)

And, if the soviet economy didn't tank, where would we be today? Radio active dust?

What did Viet Nam teach us? Oh.,..excuse me....let me rephrase: did we learn anything from Viet Nam?

Cheers,
Russell


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