Transistor's Progress

When scientists at the Bell Telephone Laboratories produced the first germanium transistor, they knew they had found a long-awaited short cut through the great glass jungle of the electronics age (TIME, Feb. 11). With the ease of the old-fashioned carborundum crystal, it can change alternating current to direct; and like a vacuum tube, it can amplify faint, fluctuating currents. But where the vacuum tube is often bulky, fragile and uses large amounts of power, the rugged little transistor, no bigger than a thumbnail, works on minute amounts of energy. Last week in Princeton, N.J., the Radio Corp. of America demonstrated just how far transistors have come toward practical use. Almost all equipment into which they have been built operates on batteries the diameter of a 25-c- piece. Among the RCA exhibits:

P: A portable, battery-operated TV receiver, tubeless except for the picture tube. With its 37 transistors, the entire set is little larger than a portable typewriter, uses less than 1/10 the power of a standard, table-model receiver.

P: A toy piano no larger than a child's pencil box. With only eight keys and two tiny batteries that should last for 5,000 hours, the piano broadcasts its electronic tones through any nearby radio.

P: A phonograph pickup with its own transmitter. Smaller than a package of cigarettes, this self-contained radio station broadcasts through a conventional radio.

P: An all-transistor portable radio that can operate for 100 hours from five tiny batteries.

P: An automobile radio, with push-button tuning, that is no more drain on a car's battery than a pair of dial lights.

P: An electronic calculating machine using 66 transistors, capable of 1,000,000 counting actions a second. Standard unit in many mechanical brains, this counter uses 1/30 the power, is 1/8 the weight and 1/10 the size of its vacuum-tube predecessor.

P: A portable public-address system, equipped with battery, twelve-inch speaker and six transistors, which takes no time to warm up, can be carried in one hand.

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