• DOI:10.1109/MIE.2017.2757775
• Corpus ID: 38161381

Seventy Years of Getting Transistorized [Historical]

@article{Guarnieri2017SeventyYO,
  title={Seventy Years of Getting Transistorized [Historical]},
  author={Massimo Guarnieri},
  journal={IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine},
  year={2017},
  volume={11},
  pages={33-37}
}

• M. Guarnieri
• Published 1 December 2017
• Physics
• IEEE Industrial Electronics Magazine

Vacuum tubes appeared at the break of the 20th century, giving birth to electronics [1]. By the 1930s, they had become established as a mature technology, spreading into areas such as radio communications, longdistance radiotelegraphy, radio broadcasting, telephone communication and switching, sound recording and playing, television, radar, and air navigation [2]. During World War II, vacuum tubes were used in the first electronic computers, which were built in the United Kingdom and the United States [3]. Although vacuum tubes had been a successful technology, they were also bulky, fragile, and expensive; had a short life; and consumed a lot of power to heat the thermo emitters. These drawbacks promoted the search for completely new devices. Alternative solutions had long been considered but without significant developments.