# Transistors 1959



## T-Man (May 16, 2008)

I just wanted to share a link about what a transistor is. This is a reprinted article , that first appeared in Popular Science 1959.


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## rrman987 (Aug 29, 2021)

Boy I am showing my age (74), but when I was a young shaver, transistors were starting to hit the market. I remeber my dad buying the "cheap" Raytheon CK722 transistor for $2 (remember this is mid 1950s (Lionels golden age) and cost of living and salaries relative to that transistor cost.) Built a simple one transistor amplifier that used a 9V radio battery to amplify my cat-whisker galena crystal radio (upgraded later to the germanium 1N34 diode (BTW you can still buy 1N34s today!!) ). This launched my electronics career until I retired. Now I closed that engineering door, and spend time gardening, traveling (sort of), model trains, reading all the books I accumulated but never had time to read, relaxing.


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## rrman987 (Aug 29, 2021)

As an add on here, I remember the early transistor radio craze. "Our radio uses 23 transistors for better reception or volume" Yep, there indeed were 23 three leaded devices, but almost all were just dead ones taking up space, or acting as a diode somewhere in a bias circuit. Of course probably six maybe seven actual transistors were doing work. Nobody said that all 23 transistors were actually live just 23 little 3 legged plastic parts were scattered about.....


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