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Nathan Edgington

Joyce Barnes

ENG 1201

7 July 2018

The Transistors Effect on the Modern World

The transistor is one of the most used products in our life but when you ask most people

what they are, they more than likely do not know what they are. A transistor is an electrical

component that is in almost every electrical device that we use on a daily basis from your cell

phone to the radio in your car. Transistors are used to do two main tasks, amplification and to

make digital logic. In the video “Transistors - The Invention That Changed the World”, Brian

McManus explains why silicon is used in the transistor. He says, “silicon is a semiconductor,

which means that its conducting properties can be tailored. This can be done by introducing

impurities” adding phosphorus causes extra electrons to be left free to roam the crystal structure.

“This extra electron makes the N-type which is negatively charged.” Boron is added to make P-

type which is positively charged. “This structure wants to gain its final electron.” (Brian

McManus) Arranging these two types of the silicon in different ways different transistors can be

made. The most basic transistor, the NPN which allows current to flow between the two N-types

when a positive voltage is applied. The transistor is one of the most important inventions in the

world because how they have changed, how they are used, and how they have changed the

world.
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Transistors have changed over time

making them smaller and more useful in the

modern world. Before transistors, vacuum tubes

were used. They were much larger and burn out

so Bell Telephone Laboratories decided to

research a new device to replace them. In the

article “The Lost History of the Transistor”,

Michael Riordan talks about how the first

transistor was made from germanium by a team

lead by William Shockley at bell lab Bell

Telephone Laboratories. When these transistors started to sell, the constraints of the germanium

became even more clear, “above about 75 °C, germanium transistors quit working altogether.

These limitations proved bothersome to radio manufacturers and especially the armed services,”

(Riordan IEEE) so research to find a new material that is more stable began. Most researchers

agreed it should be silicon but it seemed too complex for mass manufacturing. Until May, 10,

1954 at Institute of Radio Engineers (IRE) National Conference on Airborne Electronics in

Dayton, Ohio. Gordon Teal of Texas Instruments Inc. announced that they had three types of

silicon transistors. Over time new methods for making the transistor smaller and easier to

manufacture where introduced. Today transistors are even smaller and are continuing to get

smaller although we have almost hit the wall. They are getting so small that the transistors are

only a few atoms big and because of quantum mechanics they don’t work.
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Moore, the co-founder of Intel observed in 1965 that “the number of individual

components on integrated circuits was doubling every year.” (Riordan MIT) Michael Riordan

said in the article, “The incredible shrinking transistor”, Moore theorized that by 1975 there

would be sixty-five thousand components on these inaugurated circuits which are made up of

transistors. His observation held up to be true but it started to slow and may soon stop all

together. The change in the transistor has caused it to become one of the most important

inventions because of how it has changed. It has become more useful and more reliable. In the

future they will become smaller and faster until they cannot get any smaller and then new

technologies will have to be made.

Transistors are used in almost everything we use, without them we would not have

cellphones, computers, flat screen TVs, radios, and digital clocks. Even though most people do

not know what a transistor is, they still come in contact with billions of them every day.
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Transistors can be used for different things, in all of these devises it can be used to amplify

analog signals. It can also be used to compute data. There are many ways that the transistors

can be connected to do many different things. Looking back to before the transistors, the “first

general purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, used eighteen thousand vacuum tubes to

perform calculations” (McManus) for the government to find the trajectories of heavy artillery.

“The ENIAC weighed 30 tons and took up an entire room… today its computing power could be

contained on a silicon chip no larger than a grain of sand” (McManus) transistors have made it

possible to make powerful computers that fit in our pockets.

The transistor is used to make digital logic which allows it to interpret the data coming

from the storage device or other forms of input then your computer display the result on your

screen. This is done using billions of transistors connected in different ways that when current

transistors have power they cause a chain reaction

that outputs a predetermined outcome and it does

this billions of times a second to output the final

product that you can see on the computer.

Transistors also amplify, it only takes one

transistor to make a simple amplifier. The signal

(or input) is attached to the P-type and the new

higher voltage (+VCC) is attached to one of the N-

types making the output signal bigger as seen in

the picture. It amplifies because the P-type allows the voltage to change in the N-types

proportionally to the input.

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The invention of the transistor has changed the world in many different ways, it

changed how we communicate and how we learn. Communication has changed due to the

transistor because the transistor’s small size and eventually low price made way for personal

computers. These computers were small enough to have at home then the internet which was

only possible because of servers that used transistors allowed people to communicate with other

people around the world. It also allowed phone lines to become digital which made it so more

people could make calls in an area and they no longer needed to talk to an operator.

Communication has started to move more to the internet. Walking around, it seems like most

people are on their phones more than they talk to other people in person. How we communicate

may change in the future but there is no doubt that it will be in some way connected to the

transistor.

The transistor has changed how we learn. Walking in to most classrooms at a college or

high school, there is more than likely a projector screen and a computer to show models or to

provide information on what the teacher is talking about. This could not be done without the

transistor which is an important part of both the computer and the projector. Also, there are

more online classes which are basically just ones and zeros going through transistors to display

information. The teacher first made the lessons on a computer then put it on the internet. There

are also new ways to learn things that may not be academic. If you are not sure how to tie a tie

or just want to learn more about something you can find it on the internet. There are thousands of

videos that can teach you anything you want to know. The transistor has changed the world by

changing how we learn.

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Some people say that all the transistor and the technology it is used in does not help us

and is making us dumber. Although in my opinion, it is learning how to use and find the

information that you need. They say that if people do not know something they just look it up on

the internet. It is also said that it is destroying person to person communication. People are

talking to more people more often now and they are communicating with people all around the

world.

In conclusion the transistor is one of the most important inventions in the world because

of how it changes over time, how it is used, and how they have changed the world.
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Riordan, Michael. “The Lost History of the Transistor.” IEEE Spectrum: Technology,

Engineering, and Science News, IEEE Spectrum, 30 Apr. 2004, spectrum.ieee.org/tech-

history/silicon-revolution/the-lost-history-of-the-transistor.

May, Andrew. “What Is a Transistor & What Effect Did Its Invention Have on Computers?”

Synonym, 31 Mar. 2017, classroom.synonym.com/transistor-effect-did-its-invention-

computers-22962.html

Riordan, Michael. "The Incredible Shrinking Transistor." MIT's Technology Review, vol. 100,

no. 8, Nov/Dec97, p. 46. EBSCOhost,

sinclair.ohionet.org:80/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&d

b=bth&AN=9711064906&site=eds-live.

Das, Saswato R. “The Chip That Changed the World.” The New York Times, The New York

Times, 19 Sept. 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/opinion/19iht-

eddas.1.16308269.html.

McManus, Brian. YouTube, YouTube, 12 Sept. 2016,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwS9aTE2Go4&t=81s.

Ullmann, Bianka and Tibor Grasser. "Transformation: Nanotechnology--Challenges in

Transistor Design and Future Technologies/Transformation: Nanotechnologie --

Herausforderungen Beim Design Von Transistoren Und Technologien Der Zukunft." E &

I Elektrotechnik Und Informationstechnik, no. 7, 2017, p. 349. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.1007/s00502-017-0534-y.