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Re: Transistorized

Chuck Britton asked:

Pop Quiz - How many of US were born BEFORE the transistor was invented?!?!?!?!

Rondo Jeffery answered:

I was born eight years before the transistor was invented. I remember when portable radios came out that used transistors rather than tubes. They were impressive in that they were instant-on, with no annoying warm-up time like tube radios had. They were called, naturally, 'transistor radios.' You may still hear portable radios called that today, though almost everything is made with integrated circuits these days.

As long as we're making a contest of it, I was a college junior that year, studying physics out of Sears & Zemansky. The passing of the tube radio also meant the demise of the A battery (for tube filaments), the B battery (for plate voltage), and the C battery (to bias the grid). That was the reason you had to be big and strong to carry a portable radio around; it wasn't the tubes, it was all the batteries.

poj