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Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died
- 1letterunixname 3y agoDern. I had a physics lecturer, of all places, DeAnza College (Cupertino, CA), who worked in that lab. OG engineer teaching physics/engineering fundamentals.
- solar_warehouse 3y agoMorris Tanenbaum (American, physical chemist / transistor researcher) [1], not to be confused with Andrew Tanenbaum (American-Dutch, CS professor who was responsible for MINIX) [2]. Both had great significance in what we call "computers" today, in their respective fields. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Tanenbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Tanenbaum [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum
- rvz 3y agoExactly. and deserves a black bar. Can we please have a black bar for respect and recognising his great contributions?
- reasonabl_human 3y agoBlack bar?
- FeistySkink 3y agoAndrew Tanenbaum is in a no way Dutch. States as much in his Wikipedia article. There are plenty of Dutch scientists, including in CS, so no need to gekoloniseren another one.
- tgv 3y agoHe's lived and worked in The Netherlands since over 35 years, possibly 40.
- FeistySkink 3y agoDoes that make him Dutch?
- tgv 3y agoIt's 52 years: https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/cv.pdf https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/cv.pdf, but he's still an American citizen. You be the judge, but it's certainly not unfair to call him American-Dutch.
- helloooooooo 3y agoIs calling any permanent resident who is not a citizen Dutch reasonable?
- 29athrowaway 3y ago"Tanenbaum! You SOB" [handshake sound]
- jakjak123 3y agoHah, I read many books by Andrew Tanenbaum. I remember him putting in dry comments like 'It is not known whether CPUs have dreams during their deepest sleep states.'
- kkarakk 3y agoi loved those comments, felt like a mentor talking to you instead of a person passing on info
- shever73 3y agoThanks for the clarification, I was wondering if they were related.
- cubefox 3y agoI'm embarrassed to admit that this is the first time I hear of him.
- irrational 3y agoYou are one of the lucky 10,000 today.
- supernova87a 3y agoAgreed, odd that the name just is not in the same group of people as Moore, Fairchild, Noyce, etc? This is the first I had heard the name.
- hutzlibu 3y agoFame is never fair and balanced, it seems. I would think there are lots of other engineers, who don't even have a wikipedia article, who made important contributions as well.
- rchiang 3y agoEven prior to those guys, Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain have the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. Kilby received the same in 2000 (Noyce passed away in 1990).
- newswasboring 3y agoThis is the same fallacy as when people say Europe doesn't contribute to tech industry because they don't have huge software companies. All the software companies progress on the back of several asian and European companies. Most semiconductor manufacturing equipment is made either by European companies (ASML, Zeiss etc.), or by asian companies (TEL, TSMC, Gigaphoton etc.) This is why ASML till a few years ago used to bill itself as "the most important company you have never heard of".
- woodruffw 3y agoIt's incredibly humbling to be reminded how young this field of our is: this site and everything its presence implies (about the Internet, global communication, computers) would not exist were it not for the work of a very-recently-deceased engineer. Very few other fields (aerospace and modern pharmacology, among them) can say the same thing.
- cubefox 3y agoIt is interesting to think about about alternative history here: If microchip technology had never been invented for some reason, what would we have developed instead? What is the next best computing technology?
- woodruffw 3y agoI think we would have ended up here anyways: to assume that the silicon transistor would not have been invented without Morris Tanenbaum is to succumb to the Great Man theory[1]. The reality is that Morris was a brilliant man whose life intersected in the right place and time with the arc of history; we should celebrate his life and contributions for that, and not because we think that we'd be stuck in 1950 without them. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_man_theory
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- phkahler 3y agoNot sure but I think the question is more like "what if physics didn't allow transistors?" rather than if one guy didn't invent them. What's the next best thing, and how far would we have pushed it?
- hutzlibu 3y agoIf transistors would not be possible, then lots of other stuff would not exist, like solar panels or digital cameras. Handy electricity conversion, etc. I think alternativly we would have miniaturized vacuum tubes much more, the ones that powered computers before transistors (and made them huge) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum-tube_computer https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum-tube_computer
- lordfrito 3y agoThis is a bit late, article (and wikipedia) says he died on February 26. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Tanenbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_Tanenbaum
- jchallis 3y agoIt's incredibly humbling to think that his #2 and #3 life achievements were building practical high field superconducting magnets (making MRI machines possible a decade later) and being CEO of AT&T.
- dakial1 3y ago"Despite Tanenbaum’s early work on silicon transistors, AT&T did not support further research or advancement of the technology. At the time, Bell Labs was the research arm of AT&T. Although Bell Labs had “a significant technological lead in silicon transistor technology, it stopped doing proper research in the field—partly because it just wasn’t immediately relevant to AT&T’s business—so silicon transistor technology, including the integrated circuit, was done by Intel and Texas Instruments instead,” Tanenbaum said in a 1999 oral history conducted by the IEEE History Center." Good call AT&T! /s
- Turing_Machine 3y ago> so silicon transistor technology, including the integrated circuit, was done by Intel and Texas Instruments instead Right. Tanenbaum invented the silicon transistor (which of course was a major accomplishment -- definitely worthy of honor), but what most people think of as a "microchip" (i.e., an integrated circuit with multiple components on the same piece of semiconductor) was invented almost simultaneously by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce (then at Fairchild, later a cofounder of Intel).
- Fatnino 3y agoI daily drive past the spot where Fairchild was at the time. It's next to the cheapest gas station in Palo Alto (not really saying much) and across the street from the location that used to be Sun's HQ before they moved to where Facebook is now.
- allturtles 3y agoHere's another source that disagrees (BTL = Bell Telephone Laboratories): "In spite of its secondary role as a semiconductor supplier, the course of semiconductor research was shaped by the scientific and engineering achievements at BTL during the 1950s. While most of the semiconductor industry concentrated on manufacturing germanium transistors and diodes during this decade, BTL spent most of its research dollars on silicon devices... Of the ten major events instrumental in the demise of germanium as the preeminent starting material, seven originated at BTL while the other three were derived from BTL research activities. "[0] [0]: https://ethw.org/w/images/3/3a/Seidenberg%2C_1997.pdf https://ethw.org/w/images/3/3a/Seidenberg%2C_1997.pdf
- andyjohnson0 3y agoThe tree of technological and scientific developments that enable almost all of us - on this site - to do what we do, narrows back to just a few people and their work. It seems that this man was one of them. Thank you Mr Tannenbaum. Black bar.
- MichaelZuo 3y agoIt seems the headline is a bit editorialized with 'Microchip' as he does not seem to have been involved with subsequent developments of the integrated circuit, what microchips commonly refer to. Though, after checking, there apparently are no clear cut 'inventors' of the integrated circuit, which strikes me as a bit odd.
- dang 3y agoThe article seems to imply that "silicon transistor" would be more precise than "microchip" so I've put that in the title now, at least until someone explains how it's wrong.
- deepnotderp 3y agoIn so far as the modern monolithic integrated circuit is concerned, it’s pretty indisputably Bob Noyce imo
- pclmulqdq 3y agoKilby from TI is often credited as inventing the integrated circuit. But so is Noyce. And a few others. I think Kilby is actually the correct answer.
- joshxyz 3y agorest in peace sir, wishing you well in your journey.
- jschveibinz 3y agoIf you haven’t read “The Idea Factory” by Gertner, it’s really worth the time. The book is well written and it covers a very exciting time in our technological progress. Dr. Tanenbaum is discussed in the book along with the rest of the dream team at Bell Labs during those years. Here is a book review if you are interested: https://www.dau.edu/library/professional-reading-program/Pages/Blog.aspx?TermStoreId=dce24bd1-67d5-449a-a845-034b26f02d5e&TermSetId=3dc81f05-e473-42cf-8c34-4a655b89dc8c&TermId=9fc00129-2bfa-46ec-9824-2599cedc6b81&UrlSuffix=The-Idea-Factory--Bell-Labs-and-the-Great-Age-of-American-Innovation https://www.dau.edu/library/professional-reading-program/Pag...
- ed25519FUUU 3y ago94. Well done, sir. Enjoy your rest.
- intrasight 3y agoI went looking for a recent estimate of the number of transistors that have been manufactured. It appears to be in the range of 10^23. I'm pretty sure there in nothing else anyone has invented that has been replicated in such volume.
- analog31 3y agoWow, nearly a mole. I remember thinking that a mole of any "thing" was impossible.
- intrasight 3y agohttps://spectrum.ieee.org/transistor-density https://spectrum.ieee.org/transistor-density Interpolate out and we'll be at a mole in 1-2 years
- taneq 3y ago1/6th of the way to Avocado's Number. ;)
- colordrops 3y agoWhat about bits on drive platters? Do they count as individually manufactured units?
- tomnipotent 3y agoFor a modern SSD, it requires several transistors to store a byte so it's still transistors all the way down.
- irjustin 3y agoI'll be the first to admit this is a meaningless debate but seems fun! I'll say no We don't colloquial think of a HDD bit as a manufactured unit on magnetic disks. It doesn't have a direct macro connection/object. For SSDs the macro analog of a bit storage is a register and those are like 6 nand gates which those are made of like 3 transistors? Exact numbers are wrong I'm sure. It's been a long time.
- jkuria 3y agowhere's the black bar on HN @dan?
- newswasboring 3y agoI second the call for a black bar. We wouldn't have any of this (gestures vaguely at everything) without this dude.
- aarobot 3y agoApparently he passed away on February 26th, so the black bar could be misleading.
- stevefan1999 3y agoIs he by any means related to Andrew S. Tanenbaum, the author of Minix?
- gpvos 3y ago"By any means" yes, we all descended from a common ancestor.
- osigurdson 3y ago>> it stopped doing proper research in the field—partly because it just wasn’t immediately relevant to AT&T’s business It feels like businesses today are better at pivoting. Imagine improving the state of the art by 10X and simply shelving it.
- eternauta3k 3y agoMaybe pivoting AT&T is a bit like pivoting a planet-sized supertanker.
- pyro123 3y agoIs he related to Andrew S Tanenbaum or is it a common second name?
- gpvos 3y agoIt's fairly common. May indicate Jewish descent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum
- vrglvrglvrgl 3y ago[dead]