Lets skip to the telecom boom associated with the early 20th century when a single transatlantic call on AT&T Bell networks involved the use of ~12,300 power intensive vacuum tubes.
Pre-Transistor Computers
Vacuum tubes were valued because of their ability to rectify signals & amplify signals in analog radio transmitters and receivers or what later became combined transceiver circuits, tuned circuits, HAM radios of all kinds & radio broadcasting that preceded black & white TV and later color TV, which was the earliest form of networking peoples minds together before the internet & worldwide web started to do so in a much bigger way on computational systems & computerized networks via smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, servers, clouds and fiber optic and high speed networking TCPIP systems today, with more than 3 trillion miles of wires & abundant high bandwidth bundles of fiber optic multiplexing IR laser communication systems in place today energizing the 4th Industrial Revolution that's ongoing right now.
Transistor Basic Idea
Switch or amplify electrical signals, the basis of a AM radio or FM radio or broadcasting radios, or stereo amplifiers. Its input A has current and voltage, then the signal wire connected to the gate G has a variable signal that either energize the silicon or germanium crystal allowing power to flow from the input A to the output B by modulating the signal to G. In this way a transistor effectively a solid state on off switch, where on is 1 and off is 0, forming the basis of digital computers that store information as strings of binary or 1's and 0's.
From Big AC to HV DC
Copper Oxide & Mercury Vapor Rectifiers offered pre WWII ways to switch big power AC or DC for microwave radar systems, long telecom wires to overcome resistance, and in many other applications to drive industrial motors or for large generator systems. These form the conceptual basis for transistor ideas that along with vacuum tubes & relays before that, offer a way of making complex systems of connected switches to perform complex math using punch cards as input output, while Nixie tubes were an early way of displaying the resulting data output from computation. Transformers step down the voltage and increase the current, while rectifiers covert the AC to DC for use in phone systems, later computers of all kinds, though class 2 electronic switching power supplies are cheaper, lower mass and more energy efficient than older wall wart or magnetic transformers rectified to DC to energize consumer electronics like stereo systems or computers.
Desktop Computer Power Supplies are Amazing
Actually a typical desktop computer power supply is an amazing AC to DC power supply with clean DC output in several voltages 12v and 5v and 3.3v to energize the different circuits and chips on the mainboard or motherboard inside the case of a desktop computer, taking 300-1600 watts of AC power at 50/60Hz or 100-240ac from the grid power outlet connected to a power plant via the breaker or fuse equipped utility panel, that takes power from a local medium voltage step down transformer pole mounted that filled with oil in a grey painted metal can since the local line voltage over 1300vac. Higher voltages are used because they have lower losses for long distance. The local substation that feeds the medium voltage wires take HVAC at hundreds of thousands of volts and steps it down in high actively oil cooled transformers in switching yards call substations. These substations are connect by high tension high wire long distance power wires connected to power plants that generate the electricity far away from most cities where most people live and work.
HAM Radio Technician License Acquired
Familiar with radio, lighting, electrical circuits, computers and other electronics, fabricating things, DIY projects and much more, I became a HAM Radio Technician KJ7IOF "Kilo Julia Seven India Oscar Foxtrot" but live in Issaquah not Renton, Wa, Now :) That's with Licensee ID: L022870505 & FRN: 0028750644 issued 08/21/2019 by the New Systematic Call Sign Assigned from ARRL. I studied under the tutelage and encouragement of the Amateur Extra class KR7F or the late Drake Doyle and several other HAM elders including my father in law :) I took the Technician Exam Test in Tacoma in late 2019 with Meg and passed thankfully :) Good fun learning the HAM radio technician manual. I have a few different radios lost in a storage unit, but many use a handheld UV-5R on 146.960 to access the PSRG our puget sound repeater group at 9am and 9 pm weekdays, or all day on Sunday, and just ordered another UV-5R lighting deal this morning in the 8W flavor with accessories for $24 all said on Amazon. My nicknames are Google, Sargent Science Fair, and The Professor, given to me by coworkers who I have spoken with at length who notice my deep knowledgeable on a broad range of topics that I can wear together verbally when describing something in an opinion editorial fashion that some people say is like listening to me reading a book published by a scientist, interesting given that I was formally educated as a scientist at the post graduate level at the University of Washington :)
Making Pure Silicon & Germanium
In WWII America dozens of nationally funded labs were consumer huge budgets to engage in primary science, research and development of radar technology that gave the Allies a huge advantage, especially as such systems were miniaturized to mount and use on aircraft, drones and missiles eventually, now even my 21 Corolla Hybrid has radar in the front bumper for adaptive cruise control, pre-collision avoidance, and other ADAS functions aimed at improving safe operation of the Toyota Safety Sense 2.0 equipped vehicle, amazingly. The goal initially was to generate ultra high purity germanium and silicon, which would be grown into large boules of single crystals that eventually grew to 15 inches diameter and 6 feet tall, weight 1400 lbs all suspended by a 1/8inch rod of silicon since silicon has amazing tensile strength, though very brittle when compared to steel alloys, and prone to cracking or breaking like glass if impacted sharply by hard substance with enough velocity or impact energy to cleave the crystal inducing a crack that propagate during shattering.
Vacuum Tubes are like Incandescent Light Bulbs
Like an incandescent light bulb, the vacuum tube required higher voltage to work to ionize the gate such that subtle electrical signals could be switched or controlled at fast rates in data systems and early computers with hundreds of thousands or millions of vacuum tubes, in building sized early computers that only a handful of large profitable businesses and large universities could afford at first. IBM was the first big vendor of such computers, going mainstream in the 1960's with business and commerce, it's almost impossible to imagine the world today without handheld computers over 4G LTE and 5G-NR.
Diffusion of Digital Technology Today
Few people today truly appreciate how awesome the technology of today in 2024 literally built upon the shoulders of giants who pioneered entirely new industries and created entirely new markets and brand new products and services that never existed before in human history.
Up until very recently society technology change was very slow, happening in fits and spirts a few times every few hundred of few thousands of years, such that change was slow and human culture was able to adapt the new technologies into social intelligence such that regular people were effectively able to make good use of emerging new tech without causing decay or problems that way that the overuse of smartphones harming people today with degraded social skills, mental decay, depression, anxiety, fear and information overload and many other problems we are only just starting to understand formally.
Transistor Function
Consider what a single transistor typically does in a circuit. Effectively a solid state switch utilized to switch, amplify, or control electrical signals or current flow known as power in circuits energized by electricity.
Rapid Technological Change
In just a few human lifetimes of generations gaps of 20 years, computers have gone from esoteric nerdy scientist data tools to something that even young children abuse daily in excess now, so much that young children have thumb joint pain and something called Text Neck or pain in their neck from looking down at the screen of a smartphone for hours on end with a head and neck angle that's similar to staring at ones feet while standing, which puts a lot of stress pressure on the cervical vertebra of the neck that are holding the head and skull filled with cerebral spinal fluid & brain of 4-15 lbs up on top of the shoulders and connected to the rest of the body, such that the spinal cord like the internet backbone communication pathway between the brain and body, even though that's a vast over simplifications. One because our brains are only sorta like a computer, and two the CNS itself a kind of network that has only some things in common with the internet or a local area network or body area network as it were in the case of the CNS & brain & human body.
With the mind body connection in medicine and physiology still filled with mystery and many unknowns today, the functions and structure of the brain and how it signals and controls the body electrically and chemically are much more robust sciences or areas of knowledge in formal medicine related to brain science or neuroscience.
Brain as a Computer
The brain has about 700 terabytes of memory compute capacity that runs at between 2 Hz and 160 Hz depending on which stage of sleep or how awake we are respectively. Thus each neuron has its own memory like RAM and own processing power like a CPU or GPU and networked to all the other nearby neurons, but unlike ceramic metal chips or CMOS SOC in your smartphone, our brains are made of cells that self assemble and are able to freely adaptively changed their connections such that what fires together in the brain also wires together, in what is known as neuron plasticity or neuroplasticity.
You Become More Like What You Do
If it is true that we become more like what we do, then surely over time I have become more like a writer of a blog since I write some many blog postings, something that my brain has wired into my fingers in order to type on the physical keys of the MacBook Pro or iMac that I type up most of these blog postings on or with. I only use my phones or tablets to consume content usually, reserving the more powerful computers for many kinds of productivity from making, editing and uploading YouTube videos to many other kinds of work like publishing this blog & posting to X or what was previously known as Twitter.
Understanding Early Vacuum Tube Telecom
How would 12,300 vacuum tubes be used to make a single transatlantic phone call? Well mostly to pickup weak signals, amplify the signals and then broadcast or send them along the wires to another amplifier tube, linked together in long systems of strings of vacuum tubes hooked up around the world in the 1930s and 1940's, but this system was expensive and energetically intensive to operate and required a lot of maintenance since vacuum tubes or tubes required frequent replacement like short life energy intensive incandescent light bulbs.
Pressure To Develop Transistors
This meant that as the "World Became Smaller" with increased global telecom networking, an urgent need for something as efficient as the transistor was growing economic pressure and capital investment that culminated in the first simile to modern transistor created at Bell Labs by Willian "Bill" Shockley" who circumvented early FET or field effect transistor designs from Europe, by creating the worlds first Point-Contact Transistor, an idea that permeates even the latest TSMC SOC in 3NM flavors in 2025 conceptually, and amazingly.
Mass Produced Transistors Break Manufacturing Records
Today and for some time now the transistor is the most manufactured thing in the world by large margin. Trillions of transistors are made worldwide in high volume chip fabs that cost many billions of dollars that make the worlds most complex and hard to make products, integrated circuits or chips in simple terms, those "brain" chips that make all digital things of today function.
Rolling Data Centers
A newer automobile typically contains more than 130 of this digital chips, such that the global Covid19 chip shortage halted automakers production lines since they could not procure chipsets or compute modules to build or make automobiles until the chip supply was restored, and that's with the automakers using older nodes chips made on the 130 NM node or 2006 era chips, since they are often in fanless modules that have to operate in extreme hot or cold for 20 years without serve or replacement, like the ECU or engine control unit that takes inputs from many sensors to control the fuel air mixture to make modern emissions controlled gasoline & diesel automotive engines for on road use comply with government emissions control regulations while achieving the performance & fuel economy targets that discerning consumers demand of new vehicles, like people who buy the 5th Generation Toyota Prius that has 196 HP and the fastest PRIUS ever, with available eAWD.
Personal Data Intensive Automobiles
I opted to buy a 1 year old used Toyota Corolla Hybrid that has the exact same or nearly identical drivetrain and engine of the 10 Prius III that Meg's drives daily, with its amazing 2ZR-FXE engine, that Toyota has used since 2009 in various vehicles. I also love the 1NZ-FXE engine of the 2005 Prius II that Allan drives as a truck now since his F150 engine blew-up and costs $14K to replace.
Voice Controlled Digital Assistants Example
My late Italian American adoptive mother called Covid19 "Covic" and "Corolla" which made my lovely Wife & I, who lived with her at the end, laugh endearing, since she had the funniest way of asking "Alexa" or "Computer" questions in her unique way of saying things that regularly made Meg & I crack up laughing, since we would never utter a voice query in such a funny way.
I have fond memories of listening to commander Schwarz interact with the Amazon Dot I gave her & hooked up to her high speed internet, since she had very disabled hands and was unable to use a laptop or tablet, even though I got her a used tablet from my coworker for $40 to try, she insisted on having long impractical nail shop nails that made interacting with a touch screen nearly impossible. Born in 1946 she was never proficient with computers or appliances or anything digital, not even setting an alarm clock. My late adoptive father and I and even my late brother in law donated time and effort to help her with these things and many other things.
Voice Controlled Computers
Voice is the next big thing in computers said Steve Wozniak back in 2011, long before Alexa became mainstream on connected Amazon Devices. He was mostly referring to early internal developments of SIRI or Apples voice assistant AI technology.
If you own an iPhone and say "Hey Siri" that's the wake phrase where it starts officially listening for a voice queerly like "Driving directions to the nearest Home Depot" where it will then load Apple Maps and show you different ways to get to Home Depot from your existing, current or trending location.
SIRI and ALEXA have many features well beyond the scope of my understanding or this blog posting about the transition between large energy gobbling short life vacuum tube computers and networks to those enabled by trillions of tiny energy efficient transistors featured in the latest smartphone SOC, such that the iPhone 15 his around 60 billion transistors in its A15 SOC featuring AI cores, mostly to help with photography and video capture, especially in low light, to improve imaging quality, so your newer iPhone records YouTube video clips that look nicer in stunning 4K resolution.
Smartphone Videos & Photography
I record all my YouTube videos using my iPhone 14 then upload them onto the MacBook M2 Pro or last Intel iMac where I use the included free iMovie software to edit the clips together, add titles, change the color or sounds, or trim away stuff to make the movie clips faster with more value added content or content value.
People are Impatient Now / Not Me
My dad instilled this idea that I need to make my point in 30 seconds or less, but I am a very verbose long winded TLDR analytical type person, hence the long winded blog postings.
In this way I have something in common with the internet and Goggle, namely big data swirling around in my head almost causing madness except that I love God and he keeps me sane though faith in the Holy Name of Christ Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit, as a bible reading doer of the word actually real Christian, not just by name or association like so many other supposed Christmas and Easter, al-la-cart pick and choose universal universalist Christians of today who are not real Christians or followers of Christ since they do not emulate Christ and warp the word by modifying the Bible under the influence of an increasing number of false profits that God even warns about in the Bible, such that he instructs us to be aware, sharp, discerning and skeptical people who compare the teachings of profits to the word of God as written in the Amplified Bible, cross referencing Strongs Concordance for meaning and definitions, to gain deeper incite or greater understanding of the Holy Word, and so we know how to identify false profits, even though some profits will perform signs, wonders and miracles, don't for a second think that Satan or the Kingdom of Hell does not have power, its just less and much less than that of God, and by extension you or anyone who follows after Christ Jesus and emulates the ways of Christ Jesus can execute God's power to heal, bless or curse, with superior power to Satan, able to rebuke Satan or other demons who want to trick, manipulate, steal from, ruin or kill you to take away from God, mostly since everything belongs to God and exists by his will, or was created by God's voice. Noteworthy since what we say has tremendous power to lift other people up or tear other people down.
What does God have to do with transistors, well, God has all the answers. In a way God is like the ultimate computer or ultimate search engine, and knows everything about everting all dimensions perpetually and smarter, stronger, faster and more intelligent than any other being in all realms, and superior and sublime in all possible ways, beyond comparisons, amazing and beautiful beyond description, unmatched and unlimited in all possible ways, the God who speaks galaxies and universes in different dimensions into existence by his divine will, with unmatched incomparable might and strength able to do anything, with all the answers, solutions to every problems and paramount knowledge without end about anything or everything. Say it with me, God is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, or all knowing, all powerful and always present or ever-present. God sends the Holy Spirit to those who call upon his name in the Holy Name of Christ Jesus with a diligent heart towards obeying the Lord and saying no to their selves, by obedience and yeilding to God and asking God to do his will in their lives, submitting themselves unto the Lord like Christ Jesus did when he was alive healing thousands of people and performing signs wonders and miracles that people are still talking about today thousands of years later. Name someone else like Christ Jesus, and good luck since no one else in history did anything even close to what Christ did during his amazing life as a man on Earth back then.
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