Before We Start. . .

Please make two entries in your idea notebook:

What is interesting or fun about working on the
Provisional Patent Application? What is the next
thing your group needs to do?
What is one interesting thing you took away from
the videos on batteries & generators, department
stores, aviation, and nuclear power?

Trip to Saudi Arabia

Entrepreneurship Conference

Iraqi Landscape

Schedule for Weeks 10-13

Over the next few weeks in lab, work on preliminary
patent application in groups; lab will meet every week!
PPA is due on Monday, 24 November

Lecture schedule:
10/28: No lecture; view videos on The Battery and
Generator and Department Stores;
11/4: No lecture; view videos on Aviation and Nuclear
Power;
11/11: Lecture on Electronics;
11/18: Lecture on Model T; reading TBA;
11/25: No lecture; view Social Media video.

Electronics in the 20th Century

Four key inventions:
the vacuum tube invented by Lee de Forest (1907);
the transistor invented by John Bardeen, William Shockley
and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs (1948);
the integrated circuit perfected by Jack Kilby and Robert
Noyce (1957);
The microprocessor introduced by Ted Hoff at Intel (1971).

I. Inventions with Greater Output

First, there are
inventions that
dramatically
transform daily life by
making more food,
energy, or
information available.
The steam engine and
computer are obvious
examples.

Whats so Special about Electronic

Components?
Because the vacuum tube, the transistor, and
the chip can perform several simple functions.
..
operate as switches
generate and detect radio waves,
amplify weak signals
. . . it became possible to build radios,
televisions, computers, and cell phones.

Control Devices before Electronics

Watts Flyball Governor

Electromagnetic Relay

Howard Aikens Mark I Computer

Marconis Coherer

To detect radio waves, Marconi

used As a crude receiver--a
coherer which consisted of iron
filings in a tube.

Incoming radio signals made the

filings line up in the tube and
conduct an electric current to a
sounder which produced either a
short or long click (dot or a dash)
in the headphones.

After each incoming signal, the

coherer would have to be cleared
by being gently tapped by a tiny
hammer.

Inventing the Vacuum Tube

Edison Effect

Fleming
Diode

de Forest
Audion

Lee de Forest and the Audion

Edwin Howard Armstrong and the

Modern Radio
Edwin Howard Armstrong
studied vacuum tubes and
invented several practical
circuits that were able to
detect, tune, and amplify radio
signals so that it was possible
to have a convenient radio
receiver in the home.
Hence, the vacuum tube was at
the heart of the radio
broadcasting boom of the
1920s.

Semiconductors and the Transistor

Semiconductors have electrical

properties that fall between a
conductor (like copper in which an
electric current flows freely) and
an insulator in which current will
not flow.
Semiconductors often have "holes"
in their crystalline lattice that allow
the current to flow in one
particular direction.
In 1947 John Bardeen and Walter
Brattain realized you could control
currents at the point where two
kinds of semiconductor material
met, but the two contacts going
into that had to be .002 of an inch
apart.

The Integrated Circuit

In 1958, Jack St. Clair Kilby made

the first integrated circuits by
soldering tiny pieces of germanium
together.
He made his next circuit out of a
single piece of germanium.
By making all the parts out of the
same block and adding the metal
needed to connect them as a layer
on top of it, there was no more
need for individual discrete
components.
No more wires and components
had to be soldered manually.
The circuits could be made smaller
and the entire manufacturing
process could be automated.

Manufacturing Integrated Circuits

The "traitorous eight set up
Fairchild Semiconductor.
Robert Noyce advocated that
this new company focus on
developing new transistor
designs using silicon.
To do so, Jean Hoerni, created
the planar process whereby
semiconductor material could
be laid down layer by layer.
Using photographic techniques,
a pattern could by put down on
each layer and acid then used to
eat away the undesired
material.

IBM System/360

Intel, Ted Hoff, and the Microprocessor

Hoff proposed a series of standard

chips that could perform the basic
functions of a computer: a chip for
read-only memory (ROM), another
for random-access memory (RAM),
and a final one for doing the actual
calculations, the microprocessor.

Hoff and his associates believed

that a microprocessor and memory
chips could shift the entire
industry from batch mode to mass
production, allowing Intel to
manufacture millions of chips and
drive down the cost per chip.

They could make Moore's Law a

reality.

Impact of the Microprocessor

By placing an entire computer-on-a-chip, it became possible not only
to design personal computers but to also integrate computers into
automobile controls, cameras, answering machines, and medical
monitors.
The chip has created entirely new products--CD or MP3 players,
global positioning system devices, or above all, cell phones.
To get a sense of how powerful the chips are, a smartphone has
"more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the
moon.
And the chip industry--which continues to be led by Intel--is far larger
than the steel industry was at the close of the 19th century.

Take-Away Points
Electronics in 20th century is not simply a story of information or
communication but one of control.
Electronic components are powerful because they allow us to control other
technologies and to exercise control in ever-more complicated ways.

Electronics is a story of seeking substitutions for existing devices:

Coherervacuum tube
Vacuum tubetransistor
Transistorintegrated circuit.

These substitutions were sought in order to address challenges in

large-scale systems:
Telephone network needed transistors to replace relays and tubes;
The tyranny of numbers in computing prompted the integrated circuit.

Take-Away Points
Tempting to think about electronics in terms of consumer
products, but first and foremost innovation in this
industry comes about because it solves problems relating
to large-scale systems or manufacturing.
Production matters as much as consumption.