AHC: Earlier Transistor Era

John Fredrick Parker

Donor
Every so often, we have a thread talking about what would have happened if the point contact transistor had been invented and/or adopted en masse earlier.

What needs to happen for the age of the transistor to begin earlier? If, for example, promoting it in 1926 wouldn't help mainly because mass production of semiconductor materials was still decades off, then how do we move up the mass production of semiconductor materials?
 

Deleted member 1487

John Fredrick Parker said:
Every so often, we have a thread talking about what would have happened if the point contact transistor had been invented and/or adopted en masse earlier.

What needs to happen for the age of the transistor to begin earlier? If, for example, promoting it in 1926 wouldn't help mainly because mass production of semiconductor materials was still decades off, then how do we move up the mass production of semiconductor materials?
Click to expand...
You could have it discovered in the 1930s during the first round of major radar research by the major nations so that by 1940 the principles, Germany/USA/Britain, have all invented a version of it and use it to make radios smaller and less energy intensive or something (not sure what viable early transistors could be made in the 1940s with a 1935 discovery date). At that point then the US would have had time to work on the design during the war when money was flowing and then capture whatever the Germans were doing and get a little more than 10 years head start on OTL in terms of transistor research.
 

fasquardon

Earlier transistors also means earlier photovoltaics. Whether it is practical to deploy solar panels (even little ones on low-power electronic devices like calculators) depends on the costs of the materials they're using, of course.

Similarly, exactly what the earlier transistor tech means for radar, radio and computing also depends on how cheap it is to make them. If the required purities can only be achieved at great cost, and the semiconductors used are very expensive, we may see transistors being very much a niche technology that has little impact.

fasquardon
 

Starkad

I'm not sure there will be much gain in size of power consumption initially, early transistors weren't exactly small.
It'll probably take at least a decade before they shrink enough to make a difference
Robustness/MTBF is another matter once the technology is properly understood.

Another thing to consider is that electronics only advanced as fast as they did OTL because of the huge civilian market, which is why various PODs to have the computer revolution happen in the USSR are idle speculation, the military/government uses simply can't fund the research necessary to drive the technology at anywhere like OTLs speed.

And the 30s may not be the best decade for this development economically speaking...
 
Last edited:
marathag

marathag

Banned
Starkad said:
I'm not sure tehre will be much gain in size of power consumption initially, early transistors weren't exactly small.
It'll probably take at least a decade before they shrink enough to make a difference
Robustness/MTBF is another matter once the technology is properly understood.

Another thing to consider is that electronics only advanced as fast as they did OTL because of the huge civilian market, which is why various PODs to have the computer revolution happen in the USSR are idle speculation, the military/government uses simply can't fund the research necessary to drive the technology at anywhere like OTLs speed.

And the 30s may not be the best decade for this development economically speaking...
Click to expand...

The big problem wasn't physical size, smaller than tubes in every case, but getting to tube power levels was.
will be two generations of development to get to more than just small signal switching to where frequency response was good, gain was temperature stable and decent power switching ability.

That said, Germanium switching diodes would be a huge improvement for the first computers and radar receivers
 
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