Seventy Years of Getting Transistorized

Vacuum tubes appeared at the break of the twentieth century giving birth to electronics. By the 1930s, they had become established as a mature technology, spreading into areas such as radio communications, long distance radiotelegraphy, radio broadcasting, telephone communication and switching, sound recording and playing, television, radar, and air navigation. During World War II, vacuum tubes were used in the first electronic computers, which were built in the United Kingdom and the United States. Although vacuum tubes had been a successful technology, they were also bulky, fragile and expensive, had a short life, and consumed a lot of power to heat the thermo-emitters. These drawbacks promoted the search for completely new devices. Alternative solutions had long been considered, but without significant developments.