Brief History of Industrial Electronics

Nikola Tesler Invents the Alternating Current Generator & Electric Motor

(1888) Nikola Tesla was one of the great pioneers of the use of alternating current electricity. Alternating
current electricity changes in strength cyclically over time and is the type of electricity that power
companies supply to homes today. Tesla invented the alternating current induction generator, a device
that changes mechanical energy into alternating current electricity, and the Tesla coil, a transformer that
changes the frequency of alternating current.
He went to the United States in 1884 and worked for American inventor Thomas Edison for a year before
setting up his own workshop. For much of his time in the United States, Tesla worked with American
industrialist George Westinghouse, who bought and successfully developed Tesla's patents, leading to the
introduction of alternating current for power transmission.
Tesla built his first working induction motor in 1883. He found that he could raise little interest in his
inventions in Europe. He set off for New York City, where he set up his own laboratory and workshop in
1887 to develop his motor in a practical way. Only months later he applied for and was granted a
complicated set of patents covering the generation, transmission, and use of alternating current electricity.
Because alternating current can be transmitted over much greater distances than direct current, it provides
the power for most of our present-day machines. At about the same time he lectured to the American
Institute of Electrical Engineers on his alternating current system. After learning about the talk, George
Westinghouse quickly bought Tesla's patents.
Westinghouse backed Tesla's ideas and, as a demonstration, employed his system for lighting at the 1893
World Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Months later Westinghouse won the contract to generate
electricity at Niagara Falls, New York. He used Tesla's system to supply electricity to local industries and
deliver alternating current to the town of Buffalo, New York, (22 mi) distant. Soon after, Tesler’s
alternating current was supplied throughout the country. His alternating current motors were used to
power machinery in all industries.

The Invention of the Vacuum Tube

(1905) Sir John Ambrose Fleming made the first diode tube, the Fleming valve. The device had three
leads, two for the heater/cathode and the other for the plate.
(1907) Lee De Forest added a grid electrode to Fleming’s’ valve and created a triode, later improved and
called the Audion.
(1921) Albert W. Hull, an American engineer, invented a vacuum tube oscillator called it a magnetron.
The magnetron was the first device that could efficiently produce microwaves. Radar, which was
developed gradually during the 1920's and 1930's, provided the first widespread use of microwaves.
The introduction of Vacuum tubes at the beginning of the 20th century was the starting point of the rapid
growth of modern electronics. With vacuum tubes manipulation of signals because possible, which could
not be done with the early telegraph and telephone circuit or with early transmitters using high voltage
sparks to create radio waves. For example, with vacuum tubes weak radio and audio signals could be
amplified, and audio signals, such as music or voice, could be superimposed on radio waves. The
development of a large variety of tubes designed for specialized functions made possible the swift
progress of radio communication technology before World War II.
The vacuum tube era reached its peak with the completion of the first general purpose electronic digital
computer in 1945. This huge machine, called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer)
was built by the two engineers at the University of Pennsylvania, J. Presper Eckert, Jr., and John W.
Mauchly. The computer contained about 18,000 vacuum tubes and occupied about 1,800 square feet of
floor space. ENIAC worked 1000 times faster than the fastest non electronic computers then in use.  

The Solid State Transformation

Three American physicists-John Bardeen, Walter H.Brattain, and William Shockley-invented the

transistor in 1947. The transistor has now almost completely replaced the vacuum tube and most of its
applications. Incorporating an arrangement of semiconductor materials and of electrical contacts, the
transistor provides the same functions as the vacuum to but at a reduced cost, weight, size, and power
consumption and with higher reliability. Transistors revolutionized the electronics industry, dramatically
reducing the size of computers and other equipment. Transistors were used as amplifiers in hearing aids
and pocket-sized radios and the early 1950's. By the 1960's, semiconductor diodes and transistors had
replaced vacuum tubes in many types of equipment.

Integrated Circuits
Integrated circuits developed from transistor technology as scientists sought ways to build more
transistors into a circuit. The first integrated circuits were patented in 1959 by two Americans-Jack
Kilby, an engineer, and Robert Noyce, a physicist-who worked independently. Integrated circuits had
caused a great revolution in electronics in the 1960's as transistors had caused in 1950's. The circuits were
first used in military equipment and space craft and helped make possible the first human space flights of
the 1960's. They were soon being 3 used in household electronic products, such as sewing machines,
microwave ovens, and television sets.
Most integrated circuits are small pieces, or “chips,” of silicon, perhaps (0.08 to 0.15 sq in) long, in which
transistors are fabricated. Photolithography enables the designer to create tens of thousands of transistors
on a single chip by proper placement of the many n-type and p-type regions. These are interconnected
with very small conducting paths during fabrication to produce complex special-purpose circuits. Such
integrated circuits are called monolithic because they are fabricated on a single crystal of silicon. Chips
require much less space and power and are cheaper to manufacture than an equivalent circuit built by
employing individual transistors. Integrated circuits (ICs) make the microcomputer possible; without
them, individual circuits and their components would take up far too much space for a compact computer
design. The typical IC consists of elements such as resistors, capacitors, and transistors packed on a single
piece of silicon. In smaller, more densely packed ICs, circuit elements may be only a few atoms in size,
which makes it possible to create sophisticated computers the size of notebooks. A typical computer
circuit board features many integrated circuits connected together.  

Microprocessors
In the late 1960’s, many scientists had discussed the possibility of a computer on a chip, but nearly
everyone felt that integrated circuit technology was not ready to support such a chip. In 1971, an Intel
team developed such an architecture with just over 2,300 transistors in an area of only 3 by 4 millimeters.
It was called the 4004 microprocessor. With its 4-bit CPU, command register, decoder, decoding control,
control monitoring of machine commands and interim register, the 4004 was a great invention. It was
used to build the first hand-held calculator. Suddenly, scientists and engineers could carry the
computational power of a computer with them to job sites, classrooms, and laboratories. The
microprocessor was developed by Robert Noyce, Ted Hoff, Federico Faggin and Stan Mazor. New
manufacturing processes had to be invented in the manufacturing of these chips. A piece of dust or dirt
too small to be seen by the human eye could prevent their successful manufacture. And thus, the clean
room was born.