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Transistors: An Unfulfilled Promise

• tuatoru 2y ago
  (1962) > ABOUT fourteen years have elapsed since the invention at Bell Telephone Laboratories of the transistor, a device whose promise as a sophisticated amplifier has yet to be fully realized in the high-fidelity industry. Moral: good things take time. Want to know the impact of AI, or self-driving vehicles, or robotics, or gene editing? Check in 2040. Subsidiary moral: the new thing probably won't find it's greatest use where you expect.
• rapjr9 2y ago
  Yeah, and whatever happened to the supposed efficiency of multi-level logic in integrated circuits? CMOS processes might be capable of a whole new level of performance if they used base 64 with multi-level transistors. Not sure if I'm joking, does anyone know? Did it really take more than a decade for the audio industry to figure out how to get linear response from a transistor? Actually, it sounds like it took a while to develop higher power transistors. Vacuum tube amplifiers are still popular in the music industry. Some early transistors were microphonic. Those Japanese tin can transistors. Maybe some current transistors/IC's are also? There's a security vulnerability to look into!