From the History of Electronic Technology 


Мы поможем в написании ваших работ!



ЗНАЕТЕ ЛИ ВЫ?

From the History of Electronic Technology



The evolution of electronic technology is sometimes called a revolution. What we have seen has been a steady quantitative evolution: smaller and smaller electronic components performing increasingly complex electronic functions at ever higher speeds. And yet there has been a true revolution: a quantitative change in technology has given rise to qualitative change in human capabilities.

Before the development of the general-purpose computer, most calculations were done by humans. Tools to help humans calculate are generally called calculators. Calculators continue to develop, but computers add the critical element of conditional response, allowing automation of both numerical calculation and in general, automation of many symbol-manipulation tasks. Computer technology has undergone profound changes every decade since the 1940s.

It all began with the development of the transistor. Prior to the invention of the transistor its function in an electronic circuit could be performed only by a vacuum tube. Tubes came in so many shapes and sizes and performed so many functions that in 1947 it seemed audacious to think that the transistor would be able to compete in limited applications.

The transistor was invented in 1947 by three American physicists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. On December 16, 1947, they built the point-contact transistor, made from strips of gold foil on a plastic triangle, pushed down into contact with a slab of germanium.

The invention got little attention at the time, either in the popular press or in indstry. The transistor proved to be a viable alternative to the vacuum tube. Transistors played a pivotal role in the advancement of electronics - their small size, low heat generation, and small power requirements made possible the miniaturization of complex circuitry such as required by computers. They promised greater reliability and longer life.

Early transistors, which were often described as being a size of a pea, were actually enormous on the scale at which electronic events take place, and therefore they were very slow. They could respond at a rate of a few million times a second, this was fast enough to serve radio but far below the speed needed for high-speed computers or for microwave communication systems.

And it took years to demonstrate transistors advantages. Only during 1960s and 1970s individual transistors were superseded by integrated circuits in which a multiple of transistors and other components (diodes, resistors, etc.) were formed on a single tiny wafer of semi conducting material.

At first, the computer was not high on the list of potential applications for this tiny device. This is not surprising-when the first computers were built in the 1940s and 1950s, few scientists saw in them the seeds of a technology that would in a few decades come to permeate almost every sphere of human life. Before the digital explosion, transistors were a vital part of improvements in existing analogue systems, such as radios and stereos.

When it was placed in computers, however, the transistor became an integral part of the technology boom. They are also capable of being mass-produced by the millions on a sliver of silicon-the semiconductor chip. It is this almost boundless ability to integrate transistors onto chips that has fueled the information age. Today these chips are not just a part of computers. They are also important in devices as diverse as video cameras, cellular phones, copy machines, jumbo jets, modern automobiles, manufacturing equipment, electronic scoreboards, and video games. Without the transistor there would be no Internet and no space travel.

In the years following its creation, the transistor gradually replaced the bulky, fragile vacuum tubes that had been used to amplify and switch signals. The transistor became the building block for all modern electronics and the foundation for microchip and computer technology.

The second performance benefit resulting from microelectronics stems directly from the reduction of distances between circuit components. If a circuit is to operate a few billion times a second the conductors that tie circuit together must be measured in fractions of an inch. The microelectronics technology makes close coupling attainable. New principal devices found in electronic circuits: resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors have a particular role in controlling the flow of electrons so that the completed circuit performs some desired function.

 

Exercise 1



Поделиться:


Последнее изменение этой страницы: 2017-01-19; просмотров: 163; Нарушение авторского права страницы; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы!

infopedia.su Все материалы представленные на сайте исключительно с целью ознакомления читателями и не преследуют коммерческих целей или нарушение авторских прав. Обратная связь - 34.229.62.45 (0.003 с.)