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Transistors, the things that make your iPod and computer possible. We’ll look back in history. Today, on Engineering Works!

If you look around at all the things we have that use transistors, it seems like we always must have had them. We haven’t, of course. An engineer working at Bell Laboratories invented the transistor in 1947. It was a big deal, even if nobody realized it at the time. Some folks say it was the most important invention of the 20th century.

Before transistors, we used glass vacuum tubes to process electrical signals for things like radios and the earliest computers. They did the job, but they were bulky, heavy, hot, and they broke. Easily. It took the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the race to put a man on the moon to show us how important transistors are and what they can do.

Now, transistors are the basic ingredient for computer chips. Think about it. In 19-61, a single computer chip cost more than $30. By 1971, that price had dropped to $1.25. Today, that same chip is less than a nickel.

There was a time, in the 1960s, when a radio with six or seven or 10 transistors was a big deal. Now just one high-end microprocessor chip has a billion or so. Fire up your computer and printer and print two or three periods. Each one of them could cover two million transistors.

We’ve covered transistors for today. See you next time.

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