In the beginning [junction transistor]

The junction transistor, technologically the most important solid-state device, invented theoretically by W.B. Shockley on January 23, 1948, brought about the semiconductor revolution. That invention was triggered by the experimental discovery of the point-contact transistor by W. Brattain and J. Bardeen 38 days earlier. Bardeen's notebook entries at Bell Telephone Laboratories for the crucial 100-day period November 21, 1947-February 29, 1948 have been examined to ascertain why this winner of two Nobel Prizes in physics could not invent the junction transistor. It was found that the boundary between the thin p-type inversion layer and the n-type bulk germanium semiconductor in their original point-contact transistor discovery was characterized as a “high resistance boundary” in macroscopic electrical engineering terms by Bardeen, the electrical engineer turned mathematical physicist. Pages from Shockley's notebook are reproduced in full to show what exactly he was thinking on December 16, 1947, the day the point-contact transistor was experimentally discovered by Brattain and Bardeen. The origin of U.S. Patent 2524035 has been traced to the Bell Telephone Laboratories notebook pages of its inventors and examined. It is shown that this patent could not be considered as the first patent describing Shockley's revolutionary theoretical invention of the minority carrier injection concept underlying bipolar transistor action     

Analysis of rotationally symmetric arrays of apertures onconducting spherical surfaces

Rotationally symmetric arrays of circular waveguide fed apertures on conducting spherical surfaces have been analyzed. Representation of the outside electromagnetic fields in terms of spherical transmission line modes permits the array analysis to be viewed as a spherical waveguide junction discontinuity problem. The apertures, in general, carry dual polarized circular waveguide TE₁₁ modes. Two independent formulations-the unit cell method and the eigen excitation method, which take rotational symmetry into account-are developed and are checked against each other numerically for computational accuracy. These two formulations are analytically linked as discrete Fourier series pairs. It is seen that mutual coupling along the array decays more rapidly when the polarization of excitation is perpendicular to the array plane than when it is parallel to it. This analysis has been applied in the performance analysis of the dome lens phased array radar antenna     

W=Shockley, the transistor pioneer-portrait of an inventive genius

A author looks at W=Shockley's (as was his trademark signature) patents to capture a glimpse of his creative mind. A list of 90 of Shockley's patents has been assembled, including those for the electron multiplier tube (with J. R. Pierce) in 1941, the Shockley diode, and the junction transistor, filed in June 1948 and granted in September 1951 by the US Patent Office     

Moore's law governs the silicon revolution

Moore's law is not about business forecasting. It is about commanding a revolution-the silicon revolution. In the history of human civilization, G.E. Moore is a singular man who has been commanding a major technological revolution with his own law for the past 32 years, On the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the invention of the transistor, it is instructive to look at the genesis and dynamics of this law defining the silicon age     

Comments on `The relationship between tapped delay-line and FETprocessing in adaptive arrays' [and reply]

Two comments on Compton's work (ibid., vol.36, no.1, p.15-26, Jan. 1988) are made. The commenter states that the work is incomplete and hence the conclusions arrived at with regard to the usefulness of the FFT (fast Fourier transform) are misleading. The author addresses the comments, and defends his point of view     

Under the glare of a thousand suns-the pioneering works of Sir J.C.Bose

The origin of solid-state diode detectors of wireless waves has been traced to Sir J.C. Bose's pioneering millimeter-wave propagation experiments with certain polarizing crystals during 1896-1898. His seminal paper published in the January 1897 issue of the Proceedings of the Royal Society is reproduced in this issue to commemorate the one hundredth anniversary of the invention of the solid-state diode detector. The world's first patent on the solid-state diode detector invented by Bose and taken out in the United States, is also reproduced in full in this issue. Bose's further pioneering work with diode detectors, then known as “self-restoring coherers”, is discussed in particular his invention of the “iron-mercury-iron contact with a telephone” detector that received the first transatlantic wireless signal of Marconi on December 12, 1901     

Application of running Hartley transform in adaptive digitalfiltering

A transform-domain adaptive digital filtering technique based on the concept of the running discrete Hartley transform (RDHT) is presented, with an application. This Hartley implementation is shown to have a speed advantage over the running FFT approach proposed and implemented recently. Possible implementation of the RDHT in various applications is outlined. Particular attention is given to implementation of the RDHT in the adaptive nonrecursive LMS algorithm