Word: germanium
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...using the same "black stuff"-silicon-in an electrolytic solution, he got the same effect: a current was produced ten times as great as that from any other photoelectric device. A few months later they achieved the "transistor effect," a greatly amplified signal, using only a sliver of germanium and three wires...
...every hi-fi addict knows, the amplifier is the part of his set that makes little angular noises into big round ones. In the parlor version, it is a dazzling assembly of vacuum tubes, resistors and capacitors. The invention of transistors twelve years ago enabled a speck of germanium to do the work of the vacuum tube, but most of the rest of the circuitry was still needed. Last week Westinghouse Electric Corp. showed an entire milliwatt amplifier, circuitry and all, contained in a single block of germanium hardly bigger (one-thousandth of a cubic inch) than the head...
...amplifier is made by a new technique called molecular electronics. Westinghouse treats the molecules of germanium or silicon crystals in such a way that different parts of the same tiny block acquire different electrical properties. These "domains" and the "interfaces" between them act like the components of complicated electronic circuits...
Westinghouse thinks it is only at the beginning of molecular electronics. It can grow ribbonlike crystals from pools of molten germanium, and treat them as they grow. An even more advanced technique grows "rnultizoned" crystals with their differences already in them, making them into useful electronic devices at birth...
...Using germanium diodes instead of tubes," the Gamma 3 proved a versatile workhorse computer, led Machines Bull engineers to design the new Gamma 60 line. The Gamma 60s, coming out in January, are the last word in "simultaneous" computer design, are as far ahead of the Gamma 35, says Callies, as a pipe organ is ahead of a flute. Costing $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 each, depending on the number of components used, the 60s can make 10,000 additions, 3,333 multiplications, 1,666 divisions and 10,000 mathematical decisions each second. One part of the computer...