Comments by "Scott Franco" (@scottfranco1962) on "MOSFET – The Most significant invention of the 20th Century" video.

  1. Small nit: if transistors had never been invented, vacuum tube technologies would have followed the same curve. By the time transistors arrived, tubes were being miniaturized, and we had invented cold emitters, tubes that didn't need a heated filament. In fact, integrated circuits using vacuum technology appeared later. They were proposed as an alternative flat panel display technology. Extra bonus nit: It was true that early vacuum tube computers tended to operate for short times because a tube would burn out. However, the Univac series of computers, in a company founded by the inventors of the stored program computer, Eckert and Mauchly, fixed the tube lifetime issue by "derating" the vacuum tubes, that is, running much less filament current through them than normal, thus prolonging their lifetime and enabling the machine to solve serious computing problems. The next most difficult problem in computing, that of creating a large memory store, was solved, ironically enough, by neither vacuum tubes nor transistors, but by little magnetic donuts known as magnetic core memory. Thus computers reached much of their current form before transistors arrived. Taken together, magnetic memory, magnetic tape and magnetic discs formed a huge part of what made computers successful through the end of the century and beyond. I guess it does not sound as sexy to have a title like "Rust: the most significant substance of the 20th century" :-)
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