Re: Transistorized

[Leigh Palmer <palmer@SFU.CA>]

> 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.

I can't quite match Paul's seniority, but you also had to be rich
to own a portable radio in those days. Transistor radios got down
to the $2 range in the early sixties.

(I was a bootlegging ham when the transistor was developed.)

Leigh