Word: transistor
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...germanium transistor, now five years old, has reached a ripe, mature age as electronic gadgets grow. But, asked the Philco Corp.'s Director of Research Donald G. Fink, "Is it a pimpled adolescent, now awkward, but promising future vigor? Or has it arrived at maturity, full of languor, surrounded by disappointments...
Most experts (Fink included) were at first convinced that the transistor was a prodigy. In time, they predicted, it would do anything as well as a vacuum tube. The experts were wrong, says Fink. When the first transistors were built, no one worried about moisture, and moisture has turned out to be a virulent poison. Now the experts are recommending "encapsulation" (a fancy word for careful packaging). Electronic engineers have also discovered that tiny wires break away from germanium crystals for no apparent reason, even when transistors are resting quietly in cotton wool. Worse still, the carefully processed germanium...
Here and there, the transistor is doing a job, e.g., in telephone exchanges and hearing aids. But like many another infant prodigy, it is stumbling and stammering badly on the awkward edge of adolescence. Still, neither Fink nor other scientists have lost all hope. Sobered by their own mistakes, the transistor's parents are busy turning the problem child into a responsible citizen...
...Kildare Call Box. An electronic system for paging physicians that eliminates public calls over hospital public-address systems will soon be installed in the Long Island Jewish Hospital and the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. The Royalcall works on the radio principle, broadcasting coded impulses to tiny (11-oz.), transistor-equipped receivers, which each staff doctor carries in his pocket. Beamed from a central transmitter, the impulses cause the particular receiver to buzz. The doctor then uses the house phone to learn where he is needed. Cost of the transmitter: $4,000; receivers: $170 each...
...Neal McNaughton. engineering manager of the NARTB, forecast worldwide TV within ten years, explained: "The answer to global television lies in a submarine cable that will use a transistor repeater unit, smaller than a cigarette, to augment microwave relays between the continents of the world...