> On Nov 14, 2019, at 10:00 AM, Chuck Guzis via cctalk <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
> On 11/14/19 6:22 AM, Paul Koning via cctalk wrote:
>
>> Neat. Speaking of old semiconductor history, I'd love to see again the
>> description (data sheet or magazine article, I'm no longer sure) that my
>> father had, about FETs made from copper oxide. Possibly before the 1940s, I
>> don't remember. I've had no luck tracking any of this down.
>>
>
> Julius Edgar Lilienfeld filed a patent in 1925 (US 1745175)
Nice. Thank you!
> Also US 1900018 and an interesting derivative US US1877140.
>
> Also, Lilienfeld was the inventor of the electrolytic capacitor.
>
> I'm not sure about the exact copper-oxide FET article, it's not a dead
> topic; see: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.3589374
>
> I'm surprised that Brattain, Shockley et al. are regarded in higher
> regard by the history writers, particularly because they were aware of
> Lilienfeld's early work and worded their patent to avoid prior art issues.
>
> I'd ask one of today's historians which transistor type occurs in the
> greatest numbers today--I suspect it's FET by a long shot over BJT.
By a mile, for sure, given that LSI integrated circuits are mostly CMOS FET
transistors. Then again, for the first several decades bipolar transistors
were pretty much all you'd see.
There's a familiar pattern here. X does something first, but that discovery
doesn't make a real impact on history. Y does it some time later, and that one
does start a new historic trend. So Y gets most of the credit and X is either
a footnote or is generallly forgotten.
Some examples:
X = Leif Erikson, Y = Columbus (travel to America).
X = Hanso Idzerda, Y = Edwin Armstrong (FM radio).
paul
