Crystal Fire

Mentions per year

What Hacker News says

• wycx · Dec 24, 2015 · Recommends

  …references made immediate sense. Endurance looks to be popular on this list/this year. How many were inspired by Seveneves? Seveneves - Neal Stephenson The Years of Rice and Salt - Kim Stanley Robinson Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age - Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson; I highly recommend this book. Like The Making of the Atomic Bomb, but for the transistor. Lots of background on John Bardeen, William…

  on “Ask HN: Books you read in 2015?” ↗
• wycx · May 28, 2016 · Recommends

  …all the hard work of making a transistor by the Bell Labs team for discrete transistors to become a reality. See [1] for an excellent summary of the birth of the transistor. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Fire-Transistor-Information-Te...

  on “4 bit computer built from discrete transistors” ↗
• monk_the_dog · Dec 6, 2010 · Recommends

  …long as we're talking about Steve Blank, here's a couple of other books that I've read and liked because of things I've read on his blog/book: * Business Model Generation, by Osterwalder & Pigneur * Crystal Fire, by Riordan & Hoddeson * A Radar History of World War II, by Brown The last two book because of his "secret history of silicon valley" posts.

  on “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” ↗
• wycx · Jul 1, 2017 · Recommends

  This is a good companion to read after Crystal Fire [1] that covers the discovery of the transistor and the backgrounds of Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley in a similar fashion. I had hoped that book would cover Noyce, but it did not, and this article fills…

  on “The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce (1983)” ↗
• timdellinger · Jun 1, 2018 · Recommends

  Crystal Fire: the Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age by Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson is a good history of the transistor, mostly focusing on Bardeen, Shockley, and Brittain.

  on “Ask HN: Recommendations on books and documentaries on tech companies/people?” ↗
• segfaultbuserr · Jul 27, 2023 · Recommends

  …detectors to reach millimeter-wave frequency around 60 GHz already in the year 1900 before everyone else. But as far as I can see, his work had limited influence since it was far ahead of his time. In Crystal Fire: The Birth of the Information Age, a definite book on semiconductor history, it described the amazement of this rediscovery: > In the mid-1930s [George] Southworth was trying to detect ultrashort radio…

  on “1901: Semiconductor rectifiers patented as “cat's whisker” detectors” ↗
• pjmorris · Oct 3, 2023 · Mentions

  Offering this title for asking opinions of it more than recommendation, as I've not yet read it: 'Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age', Riordan.

  on “Ask HN: Best books to understand semiconductor business?” ↗
• xjwm · May 29, 2018 · Mentions

  I agree. If you have ever read the book Crystal Fire, about the work done at Fairchild Semiconductor in the 1950-70s, it took the best and brightest decades to solve the chemistry and engineering challenges present in building transistors and ICs. Even…

  on “How long would it take to create a Windows 1.0 capable machine from scratch?” ↗
• troystribling · May 8, 2009 · Mentions

  I recently read "Crystal Fire", http://www.amazon.com/Crystal-Fire-Birth-Information-Technol..., an account of the invention an commercialization of the transistor. Prominent in the book are Shockley and how the companies that spun…

  on “Gordon Moore: The Accidental Entrepreneur” ↗