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Show Tiny, Versatile Transistor Now Ten Years Old r 1 '"" m" ' .".."-T" " i " 1 t : ', T-1. ' -f ? - ' ' ' y . p " L l rrrr-' r-; r . r- dL-W . M v ;y( vk j C2 -r I ji'n s ? t -- 1 :; . -fn:- ysy- TINY BUT MIGHTY The transistor, which is ten years old on June 30. helps your long distance dis-tance calls automatically find the fastest routes across the country. D. G. Billingsley is inspecting a bank of transistors in a card translator used in completing long distance caUs through tho new telephone office in Salt Lake City, Transistors Trans-istors are located inside the tube-like casings. Their size can be determined from the inset picture. It has been just ten years since the transistor was first demonstrated by the Bell Laboratories, Lab-oratories, acording to H. K. Richmond, District Manager of the Mountain States Telephone Tele-phone Company here. This unusual device, no larger than an eraser on a pencil, heralded herald-ed what has come to be called the "new electronic age." The transistor spanned in ten years development achieved by the vacuum tube to 40 years. It can do almost everything an ordinary tube can do and do it cheaper over a longer period of time. The transistor amplifies, oscillates, has no grid, gives off no heat and operates as soon as it is turned on. It has no warm-up period like the vacuum tube. It has an indefinite life, perhaps as long as a century, cent-ury, and uses only minute amounts of power. A flashlight flash-light battery will energize a transisor for hundreds of hours. The transistor has found its way into a wide variety of uses in hearing aids, radios, fuel injection systems, portable TV sets, phonographs, clocks, toys and most of all, in the telephone industry. As its use has spread its cost has decreased. A transistor that would cost $21 in 1953 can be purchased today for $1.50. In 1957 there 'were 30 million produced and it is expected this number will climb to a half-billion by 1965, and the price will continue to be lower, Mr. Richmond said. |