A 1953 documentary discusses how the transistor replaced the vacuum tube and hints at the future of mobile technology.
There are 16 billion of them in the A16 Bionic SoC and the more of them you have stuffed inside a chip, the more powerful and energy efficient that chip is. We are talking, of course, about transistors. And these technological marvels are the subject of a 1953 video documentary produced by Bell Labs that we discovered on YouTube. The transistors made seventy years ago are nothing like the ones used now in modern times.It is interesting to realize that before the transistor was discovered, large vacuum tubes were necessary to control the flow of current in a device. Today, that job belongs to the transistor. Considering the size of the vacuum tubes used in radios and televisions back in the day, you can pretty much be assured that if not for the 1947 invention of the transistor, there would be no mobile phone industry. Back in 1915 Trans-Atlantic calls relied on as many as 500 connected vacuum tubes
Originally, vacuum tubes were used to help connect landline calls that traveled from coast to coast. In 1915, the use of vacuum tubes helped the first New York to San Francisco phone call become a reality. With 500 vacuum tubes connected, phone calls could be made over the Atlantic Ocean. Sure, we take this all for granted these days as the small device in our pocket can connect us with another person standing thousands of miles away. Radar and microwave relay stations (used for coast-to-coast telephony and television) all depended on the vacuum tube until the transistor was created.
