![]() ![]() Radio continues to serve this function even through the computer age. During the beginning of the Cold War, with constant threats from abroad, it only fit that the transistor radio, an affordable, small and practical device, should be the technology of choice for a weary public. The invention of the transistor and its usefulness in small, more portable radios for the car or the pocket, made the radio a reliable, accessible and indispensable source of information. ![]() Though many Americans relied on radio for news and entertainment during World War II, by the early 1950s many Americans had already tuned in to television. The arrival of the transistor radio may have saved radio from a quick and sudden demise. Just two years before they were awarded the Nobel, their invention had been used in the first transistor radio, the Regency TR-1, designed and built in a collaborative effort by Texas Instruments and a company called IDEA. Their successful patent application eventually earned the three inventors the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. (Actually, the story behind the transistor patent was kind of messy). The inventors of the transistor, William Shockley, Walter Brattain and John Bardeen called it a "Three Electrode Circuit Element Utilizing Semiconductive Materials" on their patent. The number of times it opens and closes mimics the varying strength of the incoming weak signal. The gate is opened and closed very fast, sometimes millions of times a second or more. When an electrical charge or signal is applied to the junction (or base) of a transistor it allows much more power to flow across the other two semiconductors. A classic use of a transistor is to amplify a weak incoming signal – like from a radio station. The combination of two semiconductors with a junction between them is what we call a transistor. The invention of the semiconductor made it possible to insert a kind of on/off switch between two semiconductive plates. The problem with vacuum tubes, however, was that they were far too fragile, energy inefficient and big for many practical applications. Vacuum tubes made it possible to amplify sounds over greater distances, making cross-continental telephone communications possible. More importantly however, we wouldn't have portable radios which are the least expensive and most accessible form of technology today. Without it, computers would never have made it into people's homes,handheld computers would be the stuff of science fiction, and we wouldn't have such things as cell phones or satellites. You could say that the transistor made the wonders of the twentieth century possible. ![]() Transistors are used in computers, stereos ,radios, televisions, satellites and many other electronic circuits.It's been over 50 years since the transistor was invented and we rely on it for more of today's technology than you might expect. The current flowing through one of the layers, the channel., is controlled by a voltage connected to the other layer, the gate. In a field effect transistor, there are only two layers of semiconductor. In the pnp transistor, the positively charged holes move from emitter to collector. The middle layer is the base, one outside layer is the emitter and the other outside layer is the collector.Īnother type of junction transistor is pnp transistor which contains a layer of n-type semiconductor sandwiched between two layers of p-type semiconductor. In an npn transistor, the middle layer is p-type while the two outer layers are both n-type. Junction transistors are again of two types npn and pnp. Transistors are of two types-junction and field effect. On the other hand, if Ill A group elements like Aluminum are doped, it becomes a p-type semiconductor (p-for positively-charged holes). When impurities of V A group like arsenic or phosphorus are doped in the semiconductor material, it becomes an n-type semiconductor (n-for the negatively charged electrons). The development of transistor revolutionized the world of electronics.Ī transistor is made of a semiconductor such as silicon or germanium with certain amount of impurities doped in them. These three won the Nobel Prize for physics in 1956. Transistor was first developed in 1948 by three American Physicists, John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain. They consume less electricity and produce less heat than vacuum tubes. Transistors are smaller, weightless, last longer and are, less expensive than vacuum tubes. Transistors are now used in place of vacuum tubes in many electronic circuits. A transistor is a tiny solid state device used to control and amplify an electric signal. ![]()
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