Wilmington Memorial Library

Conquering the electron, the geniuses, visionaries, egomaniacs, and scoundrels who built our electronic age, Derek Cheung and Eric Brach

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrationsportraits

index present

non fiction

Conquering the electron

bibliography

885377911

Derek Cheung and Eric Brach

the geniuses, visionaries, egomaniacs, and scoundrels who built our electronic age

Part I: Age of electromagnetism. The knowledge foundation ; The beginning ; Scientific method ; Magic of static electricity ; The battery ; Linking electricity and magnetism ; Faraday, the grand master ; Maxwell, the peerless genius ; The telegraph ; Messages transmitted via electric current ; Annihilating the time-space barrier ; Wire across the Atlantic ; Intellectual property disputes ; Morse code ; Impact ; The telephone ; Voices carried over wire ; Building the telephone business ; Patent battle of the century ; Sound of music ; Wireless telegraphy ; Hertz and the electromagnetic waves ; Marconi and the wireless ; Crossing the ocean blue ; Lighting and electrification ; Electrical lighting systems ; Generators and motors ; The AC-DC war ; Impact of electrification ; Edison, Tesla, and Siemens ; One hundred years of electromagnetism -- Part II: Age of vacuum electronics. Current flow in a vacuum ; Cathode rays ; The electron exposed ; The puzzle of penetrative light ; The legacy of vacuum electronics ; Controlling the flow of electrons ; The Edison effect ; The vacuum diode ; The magical third electrode ; Voices across the continent ; Radio ; Christmas eve, 1904 ; Core radio technology ; RCA and Sarnoff ; Armstrong's tragedy ; Television ; Transmitting video through the air ; A farm boy from Utah and a Russian émigré ; The intellectual property battle ; Radar ; Clairvoyance ; Hunting the submarine ; The most valuable luggage ; Radio navigation ; The microwave world ; Computer ; The calculating machine ; ENIAC ; Foundation of computer architecture ; Framework for the future -- Part III: Age of solid-state electronics. The semiconductor ; Bell Labs ; Kelly's foresight ; The unpredictable semiconductor ; The birth of the transistor ; The flamboyant genius ; Conceptualizing a solid-state triode ; Forging a better semiconductor ; Discovery of the p-n junction ; Roadblocks ; The great breakthrough ; The roll-out ... ; ... And the fight ; Shockley's last laugh ; The zeal of Teal and the élan of Pfann ; Resolution ; Launching the electronics industry ; Sharing technology ; New players ; The debut of silicon ; The transistor radio ; Japanese pioneers ; The transistor era begins ; The dawn of Silicon Valley ; Wall Street journal or physical review? ; Shockley and the traitorous eight ; The birth of venture capital ; The changing of the guard ; The integrated circuit and the chip ; Kilby and the first integrated circuit ; Hoerni and the planar process ; Noyce and the chip ; Fairchild and the Silicon Valley phenomenon ; Chip technology blossoms ; Early market for chips ; Moore's law ; Memory chips ; Microprocessor: ENIAC on a chip ; The personal computer unleashed ; Ubiquitous silicon ; Evolution of the electronics industry ; Competitors from Asia ; Computer-aided design ; The foundries of Taiwan ; Noyce, Moore and Grove ; Turning silicon into gold ; LED's, fiber optics, and liquid crystal displays ; Luminescent semiconductors ; Semiconductor lasers ; Fiber optic communications ; Liquid crystal displays ; The information age and beyond ; Putting it all together ; The information revolution ; Globalization ; Looking ahead