The Transistor That Won the World

Comments · 312

• BR

  @brunonikodemski2420 · 2 years ago

  Our team of 3 built our first alloy transistor, at MSU, as part of a class project, and it had a gain of 4.  We were third best, with another group getting a gain of 8, and number two getting a gain of 6.  The rest of the class all got gains below 1.  We got an A-grade, while numbers one and two got an A+plus.   I complained to our TA, and he told me to suck it up, since the rest of the class got C's.  Academic Life was harsh back then.  So later I became an IC designers, with several ASICs under my belt.

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• PE

  @pedzsan · 2 years ago

  One late night around 1975, my dad and I had a conversation.  He designed satellites.  In the conversation, he mentioned how everyone went with bipolar TTL but he was using RCA’s CMOS.  It worked much better in the environment of space.  I was in high school at the time.  I built a stopwatch using RCA CMOS SSI chips.  I still have the RCA books that he showed me that night.

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• ER

  @erikbertram6019 · 2 years ago

  In the description op MOSfets, you made some mistakes. Firstly, an nMOS transitor is in a p subtrate or well and a pMOS is in an n well or substrate. The n refers to the carriers after the channel is inverted (ie, when the fet starts to conduct). Also, when applying a positive voltage to the gate, electrons are attracted into the channel and with negative voltage holes are. Opposite charges attract and equal charges repel.

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• SC

  @scottfranco1962 · 2 years ago

  The FET, and especially the MOSFET, was a close equivalent to the way vacuum tubes work. This fact is often skipped in the history of transistors. In electronic design, the vacuum tube was an easily understood device. Put a voltage on the grid, stop current. Remove the grid voltage, current goes. On/off.

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• TO

  @tomholroyd7519 · 2 years ago

  TWO NOBEL PRIZES? Well ok then, that's a very short list of people (5)

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• PS

  @psikogeek · 2 years ago

  I&apos;d like to add that one of my instructors, &nbsp;Robert W. Bower, made CMOS cost effective with his Self-Aligned Gate MOSFET, <br>U.S. Patent No. 3,472,712 . &nbsp;This resulted in the MASS production of MOSFETS.

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• TH

  @ThomasWangenheim · 1 year ago

  The &quot;polish-american&quot; Inventor Julius E. Lilienfeld was a German, to be precise: Austrian jew. He studied and worked in Berlin and Leipzig. His papers were written in German of course. The only thing he had to do with Poland was, that Poland occupied parts of the later Ukraine (former Austria-Hungery) in 1918 in the Polish-Ukranian War - when Lilienfeld wasn&apos;t there anymore. He moved to the US in 1927. So a really ridiculous label.

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• RO

  @RohanSlazar · 2 years ago

  Wizards inscribe secret runes upon thin sheets of metal and then harness the power of lightning through it to force the metal to think, and you still think magic isn&apos;t real?

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• ST

  @steveunderwood3683 · 2 years ago

  I like the use of a picture of a MOSBURGER store.

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• DB

  @DB-wq6vv · 2 years ago

  Quick correction: it is the opposite: nMOS are n-channel MOSFETs, so p-doped wells, while pMOS have an n-well. Thank you for your great videos!

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• RO

  @ronaldgarrison8478 · 2 years ago

  I don&apos;t come close to understanding all the details in even this video, which is a tiny, tiny piece of the whole understanding of microelectronics technology. What I do appreciate is the astounding scale of the big picture. What a long, strange trip it&apos;s been, from those early cat whiskers to an IC with feature sizes of a few nanometers, and many trillions of devices fabricated on one wafer. If this doesn&apos;t blow your mind, you must not have a mind to be blown.<br><br>And we&apos;re not finished yet. Far from it.

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• ST

  @STR82DVD · 2 years ago

  When your content dropped, it was the perfect end to my father&apos;s day. &nbsp;Thanks lad.

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