Re: Watching the Economy Crumble



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

Straydog wrote: 
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. 

BMJ is just enough younger than me that he might never have
used a triode.


He didn't live. If you haven't loved, then you haven't lived. ;-)

Yeah, when I was a kid I got my hands on old TV set chassis, took appart, rebuilt into other things. I played with some of the old battery filament tubes. The octal sized 1G4s, 1H4s including triodes, and the seven pin miniaturs 1U4, 1T4, etc. mostly pentodes and tetrodes. They also had sub-miniature tubes about the size of two pensil erasers. Then the nuvistors came out (about the size of one pensil erasers, but I had one but did not ever use it). Acorn tubes were also battery filament tubes and, actually, the size of a real acorn. Yeah...they were all resistant to EMP, too, and our military were laughing at the stolen Russian MIG fighters with vaccum tube radios until they realized that all of our solid state radios could be melted with an atmospheric bomb burst. Then they did "hardening" which, I never found out, if it was going to do any good.

I was fortunate enough to be at the perfect 
time to have learned to use a slide rule before switching to
a digital calculator, learned to wire tubes, discrete solid
state devices, and IC circuits, learned to plot a graph by
hand, etc.

yeah... me too. Good for you. I also had a circular slide rule. And, I always wanted to get a cylindrical one (four decimal accuracy they said, 66" equivalent) and I only ever saw one in my life and they were not cheap.

I cut down trees with a stone ax to make my own
pencils, too. ;-)

Hey, I cut down the trees here to make a driveway. electric chain saw plus five deep cycle marine batteries in series. We didn't get electricity till the house was about 90% finished.

don't forget tetrodes, pentodes, and coverters.

Right, but triodes are the most analogous to transistors.

And, there ARE tetrode transistors, too. Now, there almost ain't no transistors any more....just chips.


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.

As they say on Wall Street, that's been discounted. ;-) 

Oh, I can discount more if you want.

You should see how we get good deals when we buy cars. Don't tell BMJs former boss, though.

snip


.

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