Word: silicones
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...newest wonder in U.S. industry is the transistor, a sliver of germanium or silicon no bigger than a shoelace tip, with wisps of wire attached. It is the missing electronic link that is making possible a host of new devices, e.g., a wrist radio, a hearing aid so tiny that it fits inside an eyeglass frame. In a jet fighter the use of transistors cuts 1,500 Ibs. from the plane's weight. Last week the mighty mite had the electrical industry racing madly to expand transistor production: Motorola is putting up a $1,500,000 plant in Phoenix...
...Powered Telephone. When Bell Telephone Laboratories told about its silicon solar battery (TIME, May 3, 1954), it promised to find practical work for it as soon as possible. Last week Bell told how one of these batteries (432 quarter-sized silicon disks in an aluminum frame) is gathering solar energy for a rural telephone line near Americus, Ga. At night or in dark weather the line works on storage batteries charged when the sun is shining...
Reports from the instruments can be sent to earth by radio telemetering. The transmitter may get its power from the fierce sunlight of space, perhaps using the silicon solar batteries perfected by Bell Telephone Laboratories (TIME, July...
Large-scale uses are unlikely until the price comes down. The batteries are ex pensive because they are made of highly purified silicon ($280 per lb.), which must be "grown" by a tricky process into a single crystal about the size of a fat banana. The wafers are cross sections one-fiftieth of an inch thick, and they must go through a subtle chemical treatment be fore they will work as batteries...
President Maurice E. Paradise, of Na tional Fabricated Products, is sure that the solar batteries can be made much more cheaply. He hopes that eventually the magic silicon can be sprayed on a sur face as a crystalline metallic varnish. Then really big batteries will be cheap. They are rugged and last practically forever. A house roofed with sun-absorbing silicon could generate all the current it needs whenever the sun is shining...