Crystal fire
by Riordan, Michael · first published 1997
3mentions
2recommended by
3HN commenters
2009–2018first – last mentioned
67% recommend33% neutral
It is hard to imagine any device more crucial to modern life than the microchip and the transistor from which it sprang. Every waking hour people of the world take their vast benefits for granted - in cellular phones, ATMs, wrist watches, calculators, computers, automobiles, radios, televisions, fax machines, copiers, stoplights, and thousands of other electronic devices. Without a doubt, the transistor is the most important artifact of the twentieth century and the "nerve cell" of our electronic age. Crystal Fire recounts the story of the transistor team at Bell Labs headed up by William Sho
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…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?” ↗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?” ↗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” ↗