Word: transistorized
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...take stock for a moment. To name just a few random things we did in a hundred years: we split the atom, invented jazz and rock, launched airplanes and landed on the moon, concocted a general theory of relativity, devised the transistor and figured out how to etch millions of them on tiny microchips, discovered penicillin and the structure of DNA, fought down fascism and communism, bombed Guernica and painted the bombing of Guernica, developed cinema and television, built highways and wired the world. Not to mention the peripherals these produced, such as sitcoms and cable channels, "800" numbers...
...Gutenberg's printing press had cut the cost of transmitting information by a factor of a thousand. That paved the way for the Reformation by allowing individuals to have their own Bibles, and for the progress of individual liberties, which became inevitable once information and ideas flowed freely. The transistor and the microchip have cut the cost of transmitting information by a factor of more than a million. The result has been a transition from an industrial age to an information...
...family becomes a great transistor of moral values," Keyes said. "Kids from trustful families carry confidence into the world...
...what gave Silicon Valley its name. Gordon Moore (who ran Fairchild's research arm and later became Grove's mentor as CEO of Intel) believed you could store those charges with an integrated circuit made by sandwiching metal oxide and silicon into an electrical circuit called an MOS transistor. Unlike trickier semiconductors, silicon is both a wonderful conductor of electrical charges and a nearly bottomless sink for heat, meaning it doesn't melt down as you push electrons under its surface at nearly light speed. Because it is made from refined sand, silicon is abundant as the earth...
...Each transistor on the surface of a silicon chip acts as a switch that can open or close a gate. Computers process information by manipulating sequences of opened and closed gates. A positive charge applied to the gate attracts electrons, allowing current to flow across the gap from the source to the drain. A negative charge stops the current and closes the gate...