Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age by Joel N. Shurkin
£8.99
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Broken Genius: The Rise and Fall of William Shockley, Creator of the Electronic Age by Joel N. Shurkin
£8.99
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Crystal Fire tells the story of the creation and development of that gadget, demonstrating that very little about the transistor's invention was as simple as it seemed. The device put together on that December day was no idle experiment, but the product of decades of high-level research--and the first major practical application of the esoteric quantum mechanics that had emerged from European particle physics at the beginning of the century.
Just as fascinating as the scientific background, though, is the story of the brains and events behind the invention of the transistor. The collaboration and rivalry of the three men credited with the invention--the brilliant John Bardeen, the likable Walter Brattain and the appallingly driven William Shockley--hold centre stage. However, authors Riordan and Hoddeson make it clear that the unique organisational resources of Bell Labs, the furious course of the war effort and the random twists and turns of historical accident played equally important roles. The saga makes for a gripping read and a crash course in the dizzying complexity of information-age invention. --Julian Dibbell, Amazon.com
Synopsis
On December 16, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, physicists at Bell Laboratories, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of germanium. The power flowing from the germanium far exceeded what went in; in that moment the transistor was invented and the Information Age was born. No other devices have been as crucial to modern life as the transistor and the microchip it spawned. This is the story of the science and personalities that made these inventions possible. William Shockley, Bell Labs' team leader and co-recipient of the Nobel Prize with Brattain and Bardeen for the discovery, grew obsessed with the transistor and went on to become the father of Silicon Valley. The process of invention - including the competition and economic aspirations involved - all part of the greatest technological explosion in history is surveyed here.
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