![]() The VFO and IF frequencies are both provided by the venerable si5351a with an Arduino at the helm. The best part is that all of the transistors can be had for under $10 USD! shows where radio components such as the RF mixers and the crystal filter can be purchased, saving a new constructor a lot of headaches. On transmit, an extra three components step in to amplify the microphone input and build output power, which is 2.5-4 Watts, depending on the final output transistor used. The same circuit using four 2N2222A’s is used on both transmit and receive. What makes the PSSST so simple is not only its construction, but the low component count. He forged ahead, building a novel design that he calls Pete’s Simple Seven SSB Transceiver, or PSSST for short. This happens not at Bell Labs in New Jersey or at Texas Instruments in Dallas, but in apricot orchards out West.When sat down to design a sideband transceiver for the 20 Meter (14 MHz) ham radio band, he eschewed the popular circuits that make up so many designs. But before all that, the microprocessor (the little brains on a chip with billions and billions of transistors) has to be invented. Later, most semiconductor fabrication migrates across Asia, something Congress and the Biden administration are trying to address now with the $280 billion CHIPS act. It’s the start of the shift of transistor production overseas, which eventually leads to a big U.S.-Japan trade conflict in the 1980s. “And it eventually swept the market, of course.” “That was the great success of Sony, was to start building transistor radios at very low cost and in high volume,” Laws said. Which starts a more familiar brand: Sony. Not bad.īut the platinum megahit goes to another outfit that bought a transistor license from Bell Labs: Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. And that first pocket radio his company promoted as a transistor marketing tool? The Regency TR-1? There were 150,000 sold. The pocket calculator is also partly his invention. “He said you may work on that full time and see what comes out of it,” Post explained.Īt TI, Kilby then co-invented the integrated circuit, a way to put transistors and other components on chip without a rat’s nest of wires. Instead, TI’s boss said Kilby could focus on what he wanted. A rival firm nearly hired him but stipulated he could only do the work with part of his time. This culture attracted an engineer in 1958 named Jack Kilby, who had a passion for jamming circuits into smaller spaces for important stuff like hearing aids. And there was no penalty for failure in those days,” Post said. He would build a company with the culture to become a mini Bell Labs. Haggerty came to Dallas in 1945 after buying technology for the Pentagon during the war, where he’d seen that vacuum tubes had to go. “He persuaded the company - ‘Let’s get into manufacturing.'” “There was so much volatility in both the petroleum market - up and down on exploration - and also military contracts were not very stable in those days,” Post said. But a new Texas Instruments boss, Pat Haggerty, saw this work as too cyclical, said Max Post, a longtime TI employee. The company had roots in electronics for oil exploration. Regency made these at the invitation of a Dallas firm which had just started manufacturing the four transistors inside, “because that would show that yes, the transistor is a practical device,” according to Pies. They didn’t sound great, but you could take them to the game or the beach. The design looked good enough to eat: multiple colors, big brassy dial. They couldn’t make enough of them at first,” said Don Pies, son of the co-founder of the Regency company of Indianapolis. “What was amazing was that people were so transfixed with it, that it sold out at that price. The first one was the Regency TR-1, and on its launch just before Christmas 1954, it was priced at $50, about $550 dollars in today’s money. It didn’t need big vacuum tubes, so it made carrying a lightweight, more mobile listening device possible. ![]() But the transistor had to travel to Dallas for it to become music to our ears.īefore there was the first iPod and before the Walkman, there was the transistor radio. The old Bell Telephone Labs in New Jersey was powered by genius and corporate monopoly power. We’ve been looking at the ecosystems of innovation that grew the transistor into the interconnected, digital revolution. The future began 75 years ago this week with the invention of the transistor.
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