Upheaval in Electronics
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More than half a century has passed since Radio-Electronics magazine editor Hugo Gernsback wrote this piece entitled, "Upheaval in Electronics." In it, he compares the state of the art in electronics since half a century earlier, which would have been 1911 - a couple years before World War I began. He stated the obvious, "Just as electronics of today bears no resemblance to electronics of 50 years ago, the present art cannot be compared to electronics 50 years hence." Of course he was correct. Present day communications routinely goes beyond radio frequencies, into microwave, millimeterwave, nanometerwave (aka light) and onward. As of recent, add to that instantaneous quantum communications over great distances via "entangled" media. Semiconductor technology was relatively new in 1961, with the first monolithic integrated circuit having been developed the year before. As of this writing, Micron has a 5.3 trillion MOSFET memory chip on the market. An entire FM radio receiver, GPS receiver, and radar receiver fits on a single die, sans antenna and power supply - Mr. Gernsback's predicted "diminutive radios." The depth and breadth of modern electronics is impossible to document in a single printed volume. Even the collective works of Wikipedia does not comprise a panoptic resource. Upheaval in Electronics... Future Electronic Devices Border the Incredible ...By Hugo Gernsback Just as electronics of today bears no resemblance to electronics of 50 years ago, the present art cannot be compared to electronics 50 years hence. And if we consider the ultra-rapid advances during the last 10 years, since the advent of the transistor, we know that we cannot possibly comprehend the potential electronic evolution of the next 50 years. At best, we can glimpse only dimly a few of the future evolvements. We are now at the beginning of a new upheaval: - Microelectronics.* The new art of making practically all electronic components of almost invisible thin films, only a few molecules thick, is already well established. While the components are still not available commercially, many are already orbiting around the earth in our recent satellites and are performing well. It is certain that a large number of electronic microcomponents will be on the market before 1965. Already the transistor is beginning to be eclipsed in certain directions by the maser and the tunnel diode. Even more promising is the recent newcomer, the yet unnamed cross-film, solid-state cryo-electronic (from the Greek, cryos, cold, freezing) device of inventor Ivar Giaever, of General Electric. This new device, a versatile simple component functions at once as a switch, diode, negative-resistance diode, triode, resistor or capacitor!† Future compact components such as the Giaever device, smaller than a dime, will probably replace the usual radio chassis. The reader will object to such a prediction because the new device is cryo-operated. It functions only in intense cold, at a temperature of 1.2° Kelvin, near absolute zero, in the vicinity of -459°F. That means a flask of supercooled helium is needed - a large and cumbersome adjunct, without which a superconductor cannot function. At least not now. Yet in the future we will have purely electronic superconductors without benefit of helium flasks or chemical or mechanical makeshifts. Curiously, the first pure cryo-electronic device was invented by the French physicist, Jean Charles Athanase Peltier (1785-1845). He made a cross of square antimony and bismuth rods, which, when connected to a battery, reduced the temperature at the junction to -4.4°C (24.1°F). Today we have reached much lower temperatures with newer metal alloys in the evolution of new non-mechanical air-conditioning and other cooling devices. It seems quite certain that in the future we will see very efficient semiconductor cryo-electronic units that will be very compact and efficient. There seems to be no good scientific reason why we will not have microcryo-electronic units the thickness of a dime, built up of films of molecular thickness that produce the necessary Kelvin temperature for superconductors. What will be the advances in loudspeakers? They, too, will shrink in size. Even today we have radios with loudspeakers (for the near deaf) that are so small that they fit within the ear cavity. There seems to be no reason why we will not have small electrostatic speakers the size of a dime, made from a plurality of metal or semiconductor films. Such speakers, despite their minute size, will be able to function well in the open, perhaps better than our large speakers of today. If one realizes how minute a child's whistle is, yet how loud it sounds, one should not conclude that miniature audio devices are not technically feasible. While the sensitivity of our detecting devices has constantly been increased and while the gain of our amplifiers has been pushed higher and higher, we are still at the very beginning of the art of detection and amplification. In the not too distant future, we should be able to speak to the antipodes with a two-way pocket radio, battery-operated, the size and thickness of a matchbook, including batteries. It will also be practically noise-free. There will not be a large demand for antipodal radios - it is simply given here as an illustration of what can be done in the future. Actually, such diminutive radios will probably be carried by citizens for protective purposes, against holdups, robberies and general crimes. Hidden under clothing, the set can be turned on when necessary. Such transceivers will be monitored by police stations or by the policeman on the beat. Help can thus be summoned within seconds. Such devices will certainly be crime preventers, when universally adopted. -H.G. * See editorial, "Microelectronics," February 1960, Radio-Electronics. † See Radio-Electronics, January 1961, page 12.
Posted April 9, 2024 |
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