jeff wrote in :

They
describe in detail a new device called the transistor: "It seems likely
that this device will simply computer circuits considerably."


When I was a boy, in the 50s, my uncle worked for GE heavy military in
Syracuse, NY. They threw out tons of stuff, a lot of which the pack rats,
like my uncle, were allowed to cart off instead of the trash collectors.

He brought this boy some new fangled tiny blue plastic "fuses", as he liked
to jokingly call them, with 3 wires and a red dot near one of the wires
hanging out of them. On the side, it said RAYTHEON CK-722, one of the
first production germanium transistors.

Fascinated by the new device, my school grades suffered awful as I spent my
time pouring over every book he had on transistors and transistor circuits,
determined to make something useful out of them.

What I made was a 3-transistor TRF AM radio with a regenerative detector in
a tiny plastic box my mother threw away. High impedance crystal earphones
in ham magazines were a dollar and I had those for crystal radio projects.
The new receiver had a loopstick antenna and with 2 RF stages it was very
sensitive, though not very selective.

I wore it to school just as the World Series started so I could hear the
ball game during the boring classes in our elementary school. I got
caught, of course, but when the principal found out I had built the radio
out of these new transistors, he was so fascinated listening to the ball
game on it I wasn't punished. As it was the only transistor radio in our
town, I ended up in the newspaper showing it off.

You know you're "old" when your new stuff is now a museum!....dammit.

http://www.ck722museum.com/