Re: Epistemology 201: The Science of Science

From: Albert (albertwagner_at_cox.net)
Date: 02/17/05 

Date: Thu, 17 Feb 2005 12:37:35 -0600

Richard Herring wrote:
> In message <he2Rd.6875$zs.3239@okepread04>, Albert
> <albertwagner@cox.net> writes
>
>> Richard Herring wrote:
>>
>>> In message <M%LQd.6829$zs.700@okepread04>, Albert
>>> <albertwagner@cox.net> writes
>>>
>>>> Richard Herring wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> In message <WIJQd.6816$zs.1418@okepread04>, Albert
>>>>> <albertwagner@cox.net> writes
>>>>>
>>>>>> Richard Herring wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> In message <j3JQd.6815$zs.4869@okepread04>, Albert
>>>>>>> <albertwagner@cox.net> writes
>>>>>>>
>>> [...]
>>>
>>>>>>>> I have, in fact, read everything I could find about the history
>>>>>>>> semiconductors and the invention of the transistor. I found
>>>>>>>> lots experiments, fortuitous accidents and even evidence that
>>>>>>>> the Bell was not the first to discover the effects of
>>>>>>>> semiconductors. I found no indication that 1940's QM had
>>>>>>>> anything to do with the actual invention.
>>>>>
>>>>>>> Perhaps you didn't recognise it?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Perhaps it isn't there.
>>>>>
>>>>> I rest my case, as I believe they say.
>>>>
>>>> Which is a mistake, in that you haven't proven it.
>>>
>>> That was "I rest my case" as in "<fx:whooosh>". I've established
>>> that you can't see QM when it's under your nose, either in the cited
>>> notebook page or the patent I referred you to in an earlier posting.
>>
>> I don't know what you think you have proven by your cites.
>
> I have proven that the Bell Labs people were well aware of the relevant
> quantum theory at the time when they produced a transistor.

You have something to learn of logic. You have proven nothing.

>> You will note that prior to your posting of cites I had already posted
>> cites from the same site.
>
> The PBS site. FWIW my posting referring to the site containing the
> patent preceded yours.

How peculiar, then, that your post citing PBS was in reply to my
post citing PBS, and my post even shows up in your post as
quoted. Your problem with ordering events in time might explain
why you think you have refuted my statement.

>> So I had already been there and read what you posted.
>
> Yes. Unfortunately you didn't recognise the content for what it was.
>
>> Patents are typically revisionist history. It is arguable that Bell
>> actually had a basis for a patent considering what lawyers call 'prior
>> use.'
>
> If so, it's a little surprising that nobody contested it.

You don't get out much, do you. Any casual observer of the legal
system in the country knows what happens to little people when
confronted with a battery of expensive and well funded patent
lawyers.

> But that's irrelevant to my point. Prior art or not, the patent proves
> that Shockley knew about the relevant quantum theory at the time he
> submitted it.

Just what 'relevant' aspects of QM do you believe are specified
in the patent application? At any rate, it irrelevant.

He also knew of the prior art, which was conveniently omitted
from the patent application.

I know you have read this:

http://www.bellsystemmemorial.com/belllabs_transistor1.html

===========================================
Start of silicon

     It was in *1906* that the G.W. Pickard of Amesbury,
Massachusetts perfected the crystal detector and in November of
that year took out a patent for the use of silicon in detectors.
Arguably this was the start of the silicon revolution and it did
not take long before experimenters achieved amplification using
crystal devices, long before the term transistor was devised.

     *Solid-state electronics* were born even earlier, when
Ferdinand Braun invented a solid-state rectifier using a point
contact based on lead sulphide in *1874*. But it's to Pickard
that the credit goes for discovering that the point contact
between a fine metallic wire (the so-called 'cat's whisker') and
the surface of certain crystalline materials (notably silicon)
could rectify and demodulate high-frequency alternating currents,
such as those produced by radio waves in a receiving antenna
(what Pickard called a 'wave-interceptor'). His crystal detector
(point-contact rectifier) was the basis of countless crystal set
radio receivers, a form of radio receiver that was popular until
the crystal detector was superseded by the thermionic triode valve.

     By its nature the crystal rectifier was a passive device,
with no signal gain. But radio historian Lawrence A. Pizzella
WR6K notes anecdotal stories of shipboard wireless operators in
the second decade of the 20th century achieving amplification
using a silicon carbide (carborundum) crystal and two cat's
whiskers. He cites a taped interview made in 1975 with Russell
Ohl at his home in Vista, California in which claims of signal
gain were made. This is an excerpt from Ohl's testimony:

     He gave me a copy that he had of...I think it was The
Electrician. It was a British magazine, one of these big-paged
things, you know. In it was a translation from a Russian paper in
which they had used carborundum with two contacts and a battery
supplying one of the contacts and had gotten a power gain of ten
times. And this was way back in the *1910s*, so the fact that you
could get a power gain had been known, but it was never put on a
controlled basis. I knew about it because an operator of the
Signal Corps back in *1919* had told me that some of the
operators used carborundum as oscillators for receiving. When I
had seen this article that Curtis gave me, I was not astounded
because I had known about this before I ever saw the article. I
had heard about it. I knew a former first sergeant in the Signal
Corps who had lived in, the boarding house that I lived and he
was an expert radio operator. He told me a great deal about the
use of crystal detectors on ships. He told me that professional
operators carried two crystal detectors with them. One of them
was made of carborundum them and one of them was something like
galena or something of that sort. He said the carborundum was
used for two purposes. They used it in the harbour when they were
close to a transmitter to prevent burnout. They also used it at
long distances with two points. One point was excited with a
battery and they were able to get long wave oscillations out of
it and in that we were able to be in long wave telegraph stations.

     Ohl, it should be noted, was the man who invented the
silicon solar cell in *1941* and discovered during World War II
that semiconductors could be doped with small amounts of
impurities to create useful new properties. Born in 1889, he was
bitten by the radio bug at the age of 16 and devoted much of his
life to making simple radio receivers employing semiconductors.
His accidental discovery of the P-N barrier in his work at Bell
Telephone Laboratories led to the development of solar cells.

Oscillating crystals

     A fascinating letter to Wireless World in May 1981 under
this title came from Dr Harry E. Stockman of Sercolab (Arlington,
Mass.) Then 76 years old, he had lived through the era under
discussion and provided a valuable summary of 'prior art'
preceding the re-invention of the transistor. His letter had been
triggered by a 'Sixty Years Ago' item in the same periodical)
recalling an article by W. T. Ditcham on crystal oscillation in
its May 1920 issue.

     This effect, he stated, was discovered by Dr W. H. Eccles in
*1910*, and remarked: "It is hard to realize that it took about
ten years for practical active crystal-diode circuits to appear,
in spite of Ditcham's reminder--circuits that included both RF
and AF amplification. The last one, at the time, was totally
unknown to most 'affectionados', one of them being the author of
this letter. Most of the credit for creating practical devices
[of this kind] goes to O. V. Lossev of Russia, whether or not he
knew of Eccles' pioneer work a decade earlier. He should have
known about it; one has the right to expect that he as a
qualified scientist was familiar with the world's scientific
literature."

     Clarification comes from Lawrence Pizzella, who explains how
these experimenters created successful amplification techniques
using mineral crystal devices. Lossev, he says, used zincite and
a steel cat's whisker with bias to make an oscillator and even a
low-power transmitter in the early *1920s*. This was reported in
considerable detail in the September *1924* issue of Radio News
and in the 1st and 8th October 1924 issues of Wireless World.
Hugo Gernsback, the editor of Radio News, named this the
'Crystodyne' and *predicted that crystals would someday replace
valves in electronics. All details needed to duplicate these
circuits to make a tunnel diode oscillator are in these
articles.* A German book by Eugen Nesper described an
oscillating detector circuit in *1925* too, using zincite
material and a bias voltage of 8 to 14 volts.

     *With so much information in print it's inconceivable that
the Bell Labs team were unaware of these techniques.* But in any
case Pizzella says *Russell Ohl showed William Shockley his radio
using crystal amplifiers several years before the transistor's
alleged invention in 1947.* Shockley is also quoted (in Crystal
Fire by Riordan and Hoddeson) as saying that *seeing Ohl's radio
convinced him that an amplifying crystal could be made.*
==================================================

<snip> 

-- 
"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the 
range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally 
impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it."
     -- George Orwell as Syme in "1984"

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