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James Ann Joyce D.

Carillo
ECE32
Engr. Acapulco

August 18, 2016


History of Electronics

The history of electronics is a story of the twentieth century and three key
componentsthe vacuum tube, the transistor, and the integrated circuit. In 1883,
Thomas Alva Edison discovered that electrons will flow from one metal conductor to
another through a vacuum. This discovery of conduction became known as the
Edison effect. In 1904, John Fleming applied the Edison effect in inventing a twoelement electron tube called a diode, and Lee De Forest followed in 1906 with the
three-element tube, the triode. These vacuum tubes were the devices that made
manipulation of electrical energy possible so it could be amplified and transmitted.
Vacuum tubes (Thermionic valves) were one of the earliest electronic components.
They were almost solely responsible for the electronics revolution of the first half of
the Twentieth Century. They took electronics from parlor tricks and gave us radio,
television, phonographs, radar, long distance telephony and much more.
To understand the interesting history of these electronic devices helps explain
why science and technology are important, too. Without these technologies and
electronics, our status in the world community would be diminished; therefore it is
important to study the history of electronics, science and technology. The historical
approach to Electronics is a real task because of the tremendous amount of material
that must be sorted through. Electronics is a vast sea of scientific information.
The history, origin and development of electronics and technology and some
great inventions and contribution of some of the greatest scientists and inventors of
all times:

Cuneus and Muschenbrock, in Leyden (Netherlands), discovered the


Leyden jar in 1745.
Ben Franklin (1746-52 ) flew kites to demonstrate that lightning is a form of
static electricity (ESD).
Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) Luigi Galvani was a professor in the University of
Bologna. He studied the effects of electricity on animals, especially on frogs.
With the help of experiments, he showed the presence of electricity in frogs
in the year 1791.
Charles Augustus Coulomb (1736-1806) invented the torsion balance in
1785.
In is 1800 Count Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) announced the results of
his experiments investigation Galvani's claims about the source of electricity
in the frog leg experiment.
In the year 1820 Hans Christian Oersted (1777-1851) in Denmark
demonstrated a relationship between electricity and magnetism by showing
that an electrical wire carrying a current will deflect a magnetic needle.

James Ann Joyce D. Carillo


August 18, 2016
ECE32
Engr. Acapulco
1822-27 Andr Marie Ampre (1775-1836) in France gave a formalized
understanding of the relationships between electricity and magnetism using
algebra.
1826 George Simon Ohm (1787-1854) wanted to measure the motive force
of electrical currents.
Michael Faraday (1791-1867). 1820s Faraday postulated that an electrical
current moving through a wire creates "fields of force" surrounding the wire.
1821 Faraday built the first electric motor--a device for transforming an
electrical current into rotary motion. 1331 Faraday made the first transformer.
The unit of capacitance is named after him.
Karl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855) Wilhelm Eduard Weber (1804-1891).
Gauss is known as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. The CGS
unit of magnetic field density in named after Gauss. Weber, a German
physicist, also established a system of absolute electrical units. The MKS unit
of flux is named after Weber.
Joseph Henry (1799-1878) was a professor in a small school in Albany, New
York. In 1830 he observed electromagnetic induction, a year before Faraday.
The unit of induction is named after him.
1832 Heinrich F.E. Lenz (1804-1865), born in the old university city of Tartu,
Estonia (then in Russia), was a professor at the University of St. Petersburg
who carried out many experiments following the lead of Faraday.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (1791 - 1872) brought a practical system of
telegraphy to the fore front using electromagnets, and invented the code
named after him in 1844.
Gustav Robert Kirchhof (1824-1887) was a German physicist. He
announced the laws which allow calculation of the currents, voltages, and
resistance of electrical networks in 1845 when he was only 21.
James Clerk Maxwell (1831 - 1879) wrote a mathematical treatise
formalizing the theory of fields in 1856: On Faraday's Lines of Force. In the
year 1873 Maxwell published Electricity and Magnetism, demonstrating four
partial differential equations that completely described electrical phenomena.
Hermann Lud-wig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821 - 1894) was an all
around universal scientist and researcher.
Sir William Crookes (1832 - 1919) investigated electrical discharges
through highly evacuated "Crookes tubes" in the year 1878.
Joseph Wilson Swan (1828 - 1914) Joseph Swan demonstrated his electric
lamp in Britain in February 1879.
Thomas Alva Edison (1847 - 1931): In 1878, Edison began work on an
electric lamp and sought a material that could be electrically heated to
incandescence in a vacuum. 1882 Edison installed the first large central
power station on Pearl Street in New York City in 1882; its steam-driven
generators of 900 horsepower provided enough power for 7,200 lamps.
Oliver Heaviside (1850 - 1925) Worked with Maxwell's equations to reduce
the fatigue incurred in solving them.

James Ann Joyce D. Carillo


August 18, 2016
ECE32
Engr. Acapulco
Heinrich Rudolph Hertz (1857 - 1894) was the first person to demonstrate
the existence of radio waves.
Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943) devised the polyphase alternating-current
systems that form the modern electrical power industry. The unit of magnetic
field density is named after him.
Charles Proteus Steinmetz (1865 - 1923) discovered the mathematics of
hysteresis loss, thus enabling engineers of the time to reduce magnetic loss
in transformers.
Guglielmo Marconi (1874 - 1937) Known as the "father of wireless", was an
Italian national who expanded on the experiments that Hertz did, and
believed that telegraphic messages could be transmitted without wires.
Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen (1845 - 1923) discovered X rays, for which he
received the first Nobel Prize for physics in 1901.
Sir Joseph John Thomson (1856 - 1940) is universally recognized as the
British scientist who discovered and identified the electron in the year 1897.
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955): In the year 1905, Einstein elaborated on the
experimental results of Max Planck who noticed that electromagnetic energy
seemed to be emitted from radiating objects in quantities that were discrete.
Sir John Ambrose Fleming (1849 - 1945) made the first diode tube, the
Fleming valve in the year 1905.
Lee De Forest (1873 - 1961) added a grid electrode to Flemings' valve and
created the triode tube, later improved and called the Audion.
Jack St. Clair Kilby developed the integrated circuit while at Texas
instruments.
Robert Norton Noyce (1927 - 1990) also developed the integrated circuit
with a more practical approach to scaling the size of the circuit. He became a
founder of Fairchild Semiconductor Company in 1957.
Seymour Cray (1925 - 1996) Also known as "The Father of the
Supercomputer", along with George Amdahl, defined the supercomputer
industry in the year 1976.
Introduction to Semiconductors
Semiconductors are crystalline or amorphous solids with distinct electrical
characteristics. They are of high resistance higher than typical resistance
materials, but still of much lower resistance than insulators. Their resistance
decreases as their temperature increases, which is behavior opposite to that of a
metal. Finally, their conducting properties may be altered in useful ways by the
deliberate, controlled introduction of impurities ("doping") into the crystal structure,
which lowers its resistance but also permits the creation of semiconductor junctions
between differently-doped regions of the extrinsic semiconductor crystal. The
behaviour of charge carriers which include electrons, ions and electron holes at
these junctions is the basis of diodes, transistors and all modern electronics.

James Ann Joyce D. Carillo


August 18, 2016
ECE32
Engr. Acapulco
Semiconductor devices can display a range of useful properties such as
passing current more easily in one direction than the other, showing variable
resistance, and sensitivity to light or heat. Because the electrical properties of a
semiconductor material can be modified by doping, or by the application of
electrical fields or light, devices made from semiconductors can be used for
amplification, switching, and energy conversion. The modern understanding of the
properties of a semiconductor relies on quantum physics to explain the movement
of charge carriers in a crystal lattice.
To understand the fundamental concepts of semiconductors, one must apply
modern physics to solid materials. More specifically, we are interested in
semiconductor crystals. Crystals are solid materials consisting of atoms, which are
placed in a highly ordered structure called a lattice. Such a structure yields a
periodic potential throughout the material, which results in some remarkable
properties.
Two properties of crystals are of particular interest, since they are needed to
calculate the current in a semiconductor. First, we need to know how many fixed
and mobile charges are present in the material. Second, we need to understand the
transport of the mobile carriers through the semiconductor.
Ferdinand Braun had discovered was the first semiconductor device ever: a
rectifying diode, which could transform alternating current into direct current, and
many years later actually was used in the form of point contact diodes in radio
receivers or radar units. Unfortunately, the reason for this strange behavior of his
crystals remained entirely mysterious to Ferdinand Braun. The scientific explanation
of this phenomenon only was given much later in 1939 by Walter Schottky, who at
that time developed a theory for the electronic properties of semiconductor/metalinterfaces. Honoring this work, rectifying metal/semiconductor contacts now are
known as Schottky diodes.
Sources:

Radio, Television, Tube, and Integrated


http://science.jrank.org/pages/2376/Electronics-History.html
Electronics (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronics#Electronic_devices_and_components
ElProCus Electronic Projects for Engineering Students
https://www.elprocus.com/know-about-brief-history-of-electronics-and-theirgenerations/
Electronics History - Origin and Development of History Electronics

James Ann Joyce D. Carillo


August 18, 2016
ECE32
Engr. Acapulco
http://www.electronicsandyou.com/electronicshistory/history_of_electronics.html
Semiconductor (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semiconductor
Semiconductor Fundamentals
http://ecee.colorado.edu/~bart/book/book/chapter2/ch2_1.htm
An Introduction to Semiconductors
https://www.wsi.tum.de/Institute/Scientificbackground/AnIntroductiontoSemic
onductors/tabid/65/Default.aspx

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