Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information AgeIt is hard to imagine any device more crucial to modern life than the microchip and the transistor from which it sprang. Every waking hour people of the world take their vast benefits for granted - in cellular phones, ATMs, wrist watches, calculators, computers, automobiles, radios, televisions, fax machines, copiers, stoplights, and thousands of other electronic devices. Without a doubt, the transistor is the most important artifact of the twentieth century and the "nerve cell" of our electronic age. Crystal Fire recounts the story of the transistor team at Bell Labs headed up by William Shockley who shared the Nobel Prize with John Bardeen and Walter Brattain. While his colleagues went on to other research, Shockley grew increasingly obsessed with the new gadget. Eventually he formed his own firm - the first semiconductor company in what would become Silicon Valley, spawning hundreds of other businesses and a multi-billion-dollar industry. Above all, Crystal Fire is a tale of the human factors in technology - the pride and jealousies coupled with scientific and economic aspiration that led to the creation of modern microelectronics and ignited the greatest technological explosion in history. |
Contents
BORN WITH THE CENTURY | 11 |
THE REVOLUTION WITHIN | 28 |
INDUSTRIAL STRENGTH SCIENCE | 55 |
THE PHYSICS OF DIRT | 71 |
THE FOURTH COLUMN | 88 |
POINT OF ENTRY | 115 |
MINORITY VIEWS | 142 |
THE DAUGHTER OF INVENTION | 168 |
SPREADING THE FLAMES | 195 |
CALIFORNIA DREAMING | 225 |
THE MONOLITHIC IDEA | 254 |
Other editions - View all
Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the ... Michael Riordan,Lillian Hoddeson No preview available - 1998 |
Common terms and phrases
Accn applied April AT&T atoms Bardeen and Brattain barrier became Becker Beckman began behavior Bell Labs Bell System Bell's Bohr Bown Brattain 1964a breakthrough copper crystal detectors Davisson December device diffusion diode early elec electrons emitter Emmy energy experiments Fairchild Folder germanium Gibney holes ibid idea impurities industry integrated circuits Interview by Lillian invention January John John Bardeen junction transistor June Kelly Kilby lab notebook laboratory Lark-Horovitz later Lillian Hoddeson manufacturing March metal military month Moore Morton Murray Hill N-type Nobel notebook Noyce P-N junctions patent Pearson Pfann physicists point-contact transistors problem production proximity fuzes Purdue quantum mechanics radar radio recalled Scaff scientists and engineers Seitz September Shockley Shockley's signals silicon solid-state physics Sparks STAN surface Teal telephone Texas Instruments theory tiny tion vacuum tubes voltage W. H. Brattain Walter Walter Brattain wave Western Electric wires wrote X-rays