
Crystal Fire
The Birth of the Information Age
WW Norton & Co (Publisher)
Published on 17. August 1997
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-0-393-04124-8 (ISBN)
Description
On December 16, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, physicists at Bell Laboratories, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of the metalloid geranium. The power flowing from the geranium 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.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 244 mm
Width: 165 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
780 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-393-04124-8 (9780393041248)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Lillian Hoddeson is an historian at the University of Illinois and lives in Urbana. Research for Crystal Fire was sponsored by the Sloan Foundation. Stanford University physicist Michael Riordan has written several popular books on science and technology. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.