Tube Dinosaurs (Transistor - Part one)

If you have not run away in a panic from this article, then now you will find out how our whole life has changed from one invention, and endowed us with the abundance of technology and gadgets without which we cannot imagine our lives.

I think the reader somehow understands the principle of operation of all electronics, and yet I will briefly talk about how it all began. In 1883, Edison, while working on improving the incandescent lamp, noticed that the emission of electrons increased when the incandescent filament was placed in a vacuum. Further experiments marked the beginning of the digital age in the form in which we know them from the middle of the last century. The first vacuum tube was invented by the English scientist Fleming in 1904. It was he who created the first diode, we can say that this is the grandfather of the transistor only in the form of a lamp. The lamp worked on the principle of a semiconductor. When the power source was connected with the negative pole to the cathode of the lamp, and positive to the anode, then under the influence of the electric field, the electrodes tended to the anode. Otherwise, nothing happened and the circuit did not work. In other words, this made it possible to always pass current in only one direction.

It was not an explosive invention. But a couple of years later, in 1907, another enthusiast would change the idea of ​​radio engineering forever. American engineer Lee de Forest invents "audit" (later it was called "triode"). This lamp worked on the same principle, based on the movement of electrons between the cathode and anode. And yet, his approach was significantly different from his predecessors. The fact is that the third electrode (grid) was located closer to the cathode, was not continuous and had the form of a wire spiral, which helped to pass electrons directed from the cathode to the anode. Now, if a negative charge is directed to the grid, it partially repels the electrons moving through it to the anode. If the voltage was high, then it did not let them through at all, becoming a wall between the cathode and anode. And at the same time, if a positive voltage was applied to the grid, it helped the anode to attract electrons, the current passing through the lamp increased.

We will stop there and continue in the next part.