75 Years Of The Transistor

If I had those potted-in-resin transistors I'd be tempted to carefully drill into the resin until I could access the leads so I could test the characteristics of the transistors and maybe connect them up and do something with them!

Circuitmike

I despair over the number of things which won’t get invented since the great industrial research labs have been destroyed or are at least suffering vivisection by cannibal capitalism. RCA Labs, GE Labs, IBM Labs (several), Nortel Labs, Bellcore, Western Electric Labs, and the mother of all labs, Bell Labs. And don’t leave out the US Space Program. These are not the only places where the future was invented. Academia certainly produced a torrent of research which often enabled further work. However, the distance between the lab bench and blackboard, and The Real World(TM) is vast, incredibly difficult, and vastly expensive. Without these laboratories and their bounty, the current world would be unrecognizable.

Mike O'Dell

The very first projects I ever did in grade school in the late 1960s used pre-JEDEC 1st gen junction CK722s in those top-hat cases, purchased from RS. Very fragile beasts, you had to watch base and collector currents carefully or they would open up. The later junction devices were/are far more reliable.

Howard Hoyt

An industry group called JEDEC (Joint Electron Device Engineering Council) assigned the 1N and 2N numbers. I don't think they still do this. They now set standards for things like computer memory and semiconductor packages.

Awesome anniversary! I have always found the early transistor packaging fascinating. I'll bet they had a long learning curve with the reliable packaging of the first vacuum tubes. I don't remember when the 2N2222 transistor was created, but you can STILL buy that transistor new today! I always wondered how the 1N (diodes) and 2N (transistors) family was created. How did manufacturers coordinate 2N numbers? You can't have two transistors with the same 2N number. Who manages this?

Matt Wietlispach