Comments by "Steven Gill" (@stevengill1736) on "The First Transistors" video.

  1. Basically an elaboration of crystal radios, but with more theory and purer materials. I guess the galena (lead sulfide) crystal acted like a diode, and by moving the wire whisker one could find a surface area that corresponded to the frequency desired. The tube amplifier performance was the goal, but the idea of solid state was there from the get-go, just a matter of finding the correct solid state materials.(and a heck of a lot of other engineering details). You could probably do an entire episode on the significance of purification, and how important extremely high purity of semiconductor elements has become...... So cool, thank you kindly for another thought provoking video...
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  2. We were so lucky to grow up in this era....
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  3. Yes - that purification of materials to unheard of levels affected a lot of materials - I wonder how much so was attributable to the Manhattan project?
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  4. When I was a kid one of my friends was becoming an electronics engineer, and one of the experiments he tried was heating selenium rectifiers to vaporize the selenium and then condensing it on a cold glass surface....it worked as a source of selenium for an element collection, but the fumes were gnarly! I remember the powerful odor, somewhat similar to garlic....
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  5. That's an interesting thought....if one included all the different workstations, servers, laptops and smartphones it's packets went through, might be a few....
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