The new Apple A16 Bionic chip inside the iPhone 14 has almost 16-billion transistors.
At first glance, it might’ve look more like a high-school science experiment than a revolutionary step into the future, but 75 years ago this December, a group of U.S. scientists created an electronic component that forever altered the course of human history, heralding in the ‘semiconductor age’ and giving us technologies past generations could only dream of. But the ‘transistor’ is also a story of improvement, research and development that continues right up to the present day. This month, we look back at the history of the electronic component that literally changed Australia and the world.
Watt a waste
For 40 years from 1907, the thermionic or electronic valve had not only brought the world into the ‘electronic age’, it achieved some incredible firsts. As we’ve seen throughout this series, the valve gave us global communications (Great Britainto-Australia radio transmissions as early as 1918), it gave us radar in 1935 and Colossus, the world’s first all-electronic computer, in 1943. Yet by their inherent nature, valves require a significant amount of power as heat just to function, as much as seven-watts per device (though typically nearer to 4W). While this ‘setup power’ was modest for a typical five-valve home radio, it soon added up when your computer had 2,200
