The Electronics Revolution

Frontmatter

1. Introduction

Abstract

On December 12, 1901, Guglielmo Marconi, a young man of mixed Italian and British parentage, was on the windswept Signal Hill at St Johns’, Newfoundland.¹ He was sitting in a room in a disused military hospital at the top of the hill behind a table full of equipment. Outside, a wire ran up to a Baden-Powell six-sided linen kite which he and his assistant George Kemp were only keeping aloft with difficulty. They had already lost another kite and a balloon, and they were only using these because an antennae array at Cape Cod had blown down.

J. B. Williams

2. Missed Opportunities: The Beginnings of Electronics

Abstract

One of the areas that particularly attracted the interest of experimenters in the nineteenth century was the behavior of evacuated glass tubes when excited by electricity. As the characteristics change with the amount of gas remaining in the equipment, the whole experiment depended on how well the air could be removed. Without the development of efficient vacuum pumps electronics would never have got started.

J. B. Williams

3. From Wireless to Radio

Abstract

Marconi’s objective had always been to set up a commercial wireless telegraphy system. This was modeled on the wired telegraphy network but dealt with the gaps that it could not easily fill, such as maritime communication. His single-minded development of commercial wireless telegraphy was very successful, and soon was standard equipment on ships. However, he and his adviser, Fleming, subscribed to the theory that the discontinuous signal of their ‘spark’ transmitters was essential for wireless transmission, and that it worked by a ‘whiplash’ effect.¹

J. B. Williams

4. Seeing by Electricity: Development of Television

Abstract

John Logie Baird invented television. Well, that’s what is often said. In reality, it is a lot more complicated. Television was the result of a series of steps, and a few dead ends, taking place over the best part of a century and involved a large number of people. First of all, it requires the pictures somehow to be broken up to produce a signal. Also essential are means to turn light into electricity, and the opposite at the other end. Then, of course, radio had to be developed to a point where it could carry the signal.

J. B. Williams

5. Seeing a Hundred Miles: Radar

Abstract

In the 1930s, the UK’s Air Ministry had a standing reward of £1000 (nearly $5000) to anyone who could kill a sheep from a distance of 100 yards (91 m).¹ In America, the U.S. Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground later also offered a similar reward, but here the target was a tethered goat. To get the prize the claimant had to demonstrate the task in front of official witnesses, but the real setback was that electromagnetic energy had to be used—in the phase popular in the newspapers, it had to be a ‘death ray’. The animals were never in any danger, as there were no takers.

J. B. Williams

6. The ‘Box’: Television Takes Over

Abstract

On June 7, 1946, television in Britain came on the air again, showing the same cartoon as when it had shut down 7 years before. The presenter, Jasmine Bligh, reintroduced herself to viewers with the words: “Do you remember me?”¹ It was as though there had just been a slight interruption. The government (as usual) had set up a committee under Lord Hankey to investigate what to do with television after the war, but in the ensuing austerity period it was inevitable that the existing system should be resurrected. Hankey did propose that the system should be rolled out to other parts of the country, and higher resolution systems should be investigated.

J. B. Williams

7. Spinning Discs: Recorded Music

Abstract

Before the later part of the nineteenth century, if you wanted music you either had to play it yourself or find someone else to do it for you. Generations of young ladies were encouraged to learn the piano as an ‘accomplishment’, but really to provide their families with a source of entertainment. Music only existed ‘live’. The exceptions were the chiming of clocks, and barrel organs which could only play one tune, or at best a few short ones.

J. B. Williams

8. The Crystal Triode: The Transistor

Abstract

After the Second World War, electronics was beginning to run out of steam as the limitations of thermionic vacuum tubes were being reached. Their shortcomings were their size, power consumption and reliability. There was what was called ‘the tyranny of numbers’, a phenomenon where systems became so complex that the losses from failures and downtime started to exceed the benefits. This applied to early attempts to build computers, but also to telephone systems. In America, Bell Labs, the research arm of the American Telephone and Telegraph organization, was keen to find a solution.

J. B. Williams

9. Pop Music: Youth Culture in the 1950s and 1960s

Abstract

At the beginning of September 1956 the UK suddenly became aware of ‘Rock and Roll’. The reason was that ‘disturbances’ were taking place in movie theaters, and outside them in the street, leading to a considerable number of youths finding themselves in front of the magistrates. Their offence was to be ‘jiving’ in the cinemas and then being ejected. When they continued their dancing and singing in the street the police attempted to move them on. When this failed a number were arrested.¹ These problems continued for the next 2 or 3 weeks.

J. B. Williams

10. From People to Machines: The Rise of Computers

Abstract

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries there was a great demand for tables, partly mathematical ones such as logarithms and trigonometrical functions, but also important ones for navigation. These were all compiled by hand by poor drudges called computers and, not surprisingly, they were full of errors. These occurred not only at the calculation stage, but in transcription and printing. Where text has some rationale, it allows the copier to apply intelligence; a meaningless jumble of numbers is much more prone to mistakes.

J. B. Williams

11. Chips into Everything: Integrated Circuits

Abstract

On May 6, 1952, Geoffrey W.A. Dummer, a British radar engineer who worked at the UK’s Telecommunications Research Establishment in Malvern, presented a paper on ‘Component Development in the United Kingdom’ at the Electronic Components Symposium in Washington. In it he said: ‘At this stage, I would like to take a peep into the future. With the advent of the transistor and the work in semiconductors generally, it seems now possible to envisage electronic equipment in a solid block with no connecting wires. The block may consist of layers of insulating, conducting, rectifying and amplifying materials, the electrical functions being connected directly by cutting out areas of the various layers.’¹

J. B. Williams

12. From Signboards to Screens: Displays

Abstract

In 1900 signs, whether for giving information or as advertisements, had to be either paint on boards or print on paper—the traditional poster. Variable information presented even greater problems and here the choice was to use pointers over some form of fixed scale; the most obvious versions being the clock face and the electrical voltmeter and its variants. More random information needed manual intervention, such as the station master changing the painted wooden board to show the destination of the next train.

J. B. Williams

13. Distributing Time: Clocks and Watches

Abstract

Great Britain, November 1840: As their tracks moved steadily westwards, the directors of the Great Western Railway came to a decision that all the clocks on their line would be set to London time and not to the local time at a particular station.¹ With their fast trains and tracks running more-or-less east–west scheduling was a particular problem. At the time it was for operational convenience, but its consequences rippled down the years and are still with us.

J. B. Williams

14. From Desktop to Pocket: Calculators

Abstract

The need to have a more efficient way to calculate numbers had been recognized for centuries. Many attempts were made by the likes of Pascal, Leibniz and Babbage to produce machines, but none were entirely satisfactory or found wide use. Frenchman Charles Xavier Thomas de Colmar first made public his Arithmometer in 1820, but it wasn’t ready and it was only in 1851 that he started to make it available commercially.¹

J. B. Williams

15. Shrinking Computers: Microprocessors

Abstract

In April 1970 Frederico Faggin, a young Italian working in America, followed a number of his bosses, who had left Fairchild Semiconductor, to the young Intel that they had formed. He had been promised a challenging chip design project though he didn’t know any of the detail. Little did he realize quite what he had let himself in for. The worst was that the customer was due in a few days’ time and no work had been done on the project for some 6 months. When Masatoshi Shima, Busicom’s engineer, learned of this, he was furious and called Faggin all sorts of names despite him trying to explain that he had only just arrived.¹

J. B. Williams

16. Instant Cooking: Microwave Ovens

Abstract

Percy Lebaron Spencer was yet another American farm boy. He was born in 1894 in Howland in Maine and had a very hard upbringing as his father died when he was still an infant. His mother could not cope and he was taken in by a poor uncle and aunt and as a result had little formal schooling. However, he became interested in electricity and educated himself in the subject. Joining the Navy before the First World War he went to Radio School and learned about the upcoming field of electronics. When discharged at the end of the war he was thoroughly conversant with the subject.¹

J. B. Williams

17. Essentials or Toys: Home Computers

Abstract

With the development of microprocessors as described in Chap. 15, it was only a matter of time before they were used for the most obvious task—to form the basis of computers. The problem at the time was that they were very expensive. The first company to overcome this was a small American manufacturer called Micro Instrumentation Telemetry Systems (MITS). They managed to do a deal with Intel to obtain the 8080 microprocessor at a much reduced price and produced their Altair 8800 system in 1975.

J. B. Williams

18. Computers Take Over the Workplace

Abstract

In the spring of 1978, Dan Bricklin was a student at Harvard Business School studying for his MBA. As part of the course they had to do calculations on case studies that could be time consuming and tedious. He daydreamed of a calculator that had a big head-up display like a fighter plane and a mouse to move the calculator around on the display so that he could punch in a few numbers or do some calculations. By the summer, while riding his bike, he decided he wanted to pursue this idea and create a real product to sell after he graduated.¹

J. B. Williams

19. From Clerks to Xerography: Copiers

Abstract

In 1777, Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, started investigating a way of copying letters or, more specifically, a method of making two copies at once.¹ Though he probably didn’t know it, using a mechanical linkage between two pens, one of which was manipulated by the writer while the second produced the copy, wasn’t a new idea. However, he pursued his thoughts to the point of making a working device in the following year.

J. B. Williams

20. Shrinking the World: Communication Satellites

Abstract

In 1865, the French science fiction writer Jules Verne produced a new publication in his ‘voyages extraordinaires’ series of adventure tales.¹ This one was called De la terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon) and featured a gun 900 ft long that shot a capsule containing three intrepid travellers on their journey.² Five years later, he produced a sequel Autour de la lune (Trip Around the Moon) giving their adventures once they had reached their target. Needless to say, despite the aura of scientific calculation, the gun required would have needed to be impossibly large. It wasn’t practicable.

J. B. Williams

21. Personal Communicators: Mobile Phones

Abstract

Almost from the moment that Marconi began a wireless service, artists and writers began to conceive of personal communicators. The idea was always a small unit that the user could carry around to receive messages and, better still, send them. A cartoon by Lewis Baumer from Punch in 1906 foresees personal boxes that could receive telegraphy messages by wireless, with the users sporting aerials on their hats. The cartoonist hasn’t had the imagination to realize that the transmission could be of voice as this hadn’t been invented at the time (Fig. 21.1).

J. B. Williams

22. Going Online: The Internet

Abstract

Pavel Baranov was born in 1926 in Grodno, Poland (now in Belarus), but 2 years later his parents moved to the US where he took the name Paul Baran.¹ Though his father owned a small grocery store Paul’s interest was in electrical engineering and in 1949 he received his degree. He worked in the infant computer industry for some years before obtaining his masters degree in 1959, after which he went to work for the RAND organization which carried out research for the US military.

J. B. Williams

23. Glass to the Rescue: Fiber Optics

Abstract

Ever since the rise of the telegraph in the nineteenth century, the demand for communication over distances has become greater and greater. Telegraph signals can be as slow as they like, but the user’s impatience caused them to be speeded up. Telephones needed fast signals—more bandwidth—and so on. Television required more than radio and so the need for ever more sophisticated means of communication became apparent as the twentieth century progressed. Developments in electronics kept pace until after the Second World War.

J. B. Williams

24. Towards Virtual Money: Cards, ATMs and PoS

Abstract

Banking operations in themselves are reasonably simple. It is the sheer number of these transactions and the need to do them all within the same day that cause the difficulties. It was natural that the banks should look to mechanization as it became available. Despite being rather conservative by nature, these pressures meant that they were some of the earliest organizations to investigate computerization.

J. B. Williams

25. Saving TV Programmes: Video Recording

Abstract

Film provided a convenient way of recording moving pictures. However, with the rise of television it was not very satisfactory to convert the TV images to film, which required the time-consuming business of processing it. To regenerate television pictures required a further conversion back from the film. This was not something that could be done quickly; it produced poor quality pictures, and was inconvenient for regular use.

J. B. Williams

26. Electronics Invades Photography: Digital Cameras

Abstract

Originally, of course, photography was a matter of chemicals. Electricity, in any form, wasn’t involved but, in low light levels, something was needed to brighten the scene and that was the flash. Initially, a number of evil substances were used that, when triggered, would burn or explode producing a short but brilliant light. It wasn’t long into the twentieth century before a battery and some fine wire were being used to trigger the flash.¹

J. B. Williams

27. Seeing Inside the Body: Electronics Aids Medicine

Abstract

The relationship between muscles, including those of the heart, and electricity had been known since Galvani’s experiments in the 1780s, or possibly even before. However, in 1887, Augustus D. Waller at St Mary’s Medical School in London showed that electrical signals of the heart could be monitored from outside the body.¹ He used a capillary electrometer, invented in 1872 by French physicist Gabriel Lippmann, to measure the signals.² This was a crude device where a column of mercury met sulfuric acid and the meniscus between the two would move when a current flowed from one liquid to the other. The result was recorded on a moving photographic plate.

J. B. Williams

28. Knowing Where You Are: GPS

Abstract

On October 22, 1707 the wonderfully named Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell was bringing the British Mediterranean fleet back to home waters.¹ He called his navigators together and the consensus was that they were off the French coast near Ushant, though one thought they were further north. A few hours later the leading ships crashed into the rocks of the Scilly Isles. Shovell’s flagship, the ‘Association’, and two others, the ‘Romney’ and the ‘Eagle’, sank and there was only one survivor out of the 1300 crew.

J. B. Williams

29. The Electronics Revolution

Abstract

On the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999, aircraft will fall out of the sky, lifts stop mid floor, power stations will cease generating, nuclear reactors will go critical and missiles will fire themselves at random.¹ Broadcasting will stop, vehicles will grind to a halt so food supplies will not get through, money will disappear as the banks’ computers fail and civil disorder will break out. Those were only some of the disasters that were predicted.

J. B. Williams

Backmatter