Hello,

Transistor: You may probably enjoy watching this excellent documentary.
John Bardeen, William Shockley and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs
Without any doubt, it is a fantastic documentary to watch.

Herewith the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4XknGqr3Bo

Enjoy Watching.

Thank you. Even though I'd read about this development in the 50s and 60s while learning solid state side-by-side with tubes, this video I'd never seen put it all together for a fascinating story. This story could have been written by Shakespeare about brains, ambition, and a war of brother against brother fueled by ego, but then Truth actually is often stranger than Fiction.

Indeed fueled by ego. Could it be quite sad actually?

in my experience almost everything of such import and impact runs the gamut - sad, joyous, uplifting, degrading, etc etc. I had a Psychology professor who once said "To the worm, the Robin's song does NOT sound like Cheerup!" I'm pretty certain he was on to something there

The mentalities were at that time also quite different... Who knows if the story in the movie is really true and reliable?

thank you for posting this. I'll watch it tonight with dinner.

The movie isn't full HD, hopefully it stays watchable ...

It is assumed that you, like any thinking person, understands that any major event is subject to Point Of View, thus the analog of Robin and Worm. Because Bell labs was a huge corporation a great deal of what went on is Public Record. Now that Record may be spun in POV to amplify some things while others are downplayed or even ignored to serve "the corporate good" but it is documented at many levels as we can see by photos, films, time frames, attendance records, patent applications, books, purchase orders and Nobel Prizes just to name a few interlocking pieces of evidence at all levels from insignificant to profound. So while it may not be all true from every POV, it is at least wise to consider it a reliable bit of evidence and if one wants more, to research any conflicting accounts and weigh them together.

It is just too simple (and I should add intellectually lazy IMHO) to just deny everything as being unreliable and custom made to specifically fool you. There are indeed those who want you default to such easy denial because that isolates people and makes it vastly easier to ignore and roll over them or rule them.

yeah pretty bad on the big screen but it's watchable on the laptop.

Thanks again.

I read somewhere (I wish I could find the source again) that
solid state (chips) were invented at bletchley park during
or just after the war, but they were ignored because nobody
could think of a use for them.

A typical British response if true.

"Jim just invented intergalactic travel"
"Very clever old chap - now about this wheel we've been experimenting with..."

There is a world of difference between proof of concept and application, especially since it often takes time to even realize what concept is proven. For example all the basic components for a Television receiver were in place some time in the mid to late 1800s but it took almost a century before electronic communication of any kind matured enough to where anyone could even conceive that sending "moving pictures" through the air was anything more than a fever dream.

It is true that many people were studying the movement of electrons through solid objects and materials. Simply doing experiments mapping out semiconductors is essential knowledge but that is hardly a fully realized product merely waiting for an application. As in the case of the TV example above Crooke's Tube as a fully realized device was the forerunner of all vacuum tubes including CRTs but nobody had yet to explore how to control electron flow with added elements or coat one side with a phosphor to translate a beam of electrons into light on what would become a screen.

If such things interest you, the combination of study and serendipity of how things came to be, the BBC series "Connections" is a terrific and fascinating study.

Is it possible that transistor and electricity were found by Egyptians? A cataclysm turned to fire planet earth.

While it is fun to speculate on the methods that have been lost in history and especially in Pre-History, before written records were widely kept, I would be very cautious about "going overboard". Things tend to fit together. Let me explain what I mean. The oldest known stone tools predate what we think of as humans being reliably dated to well over 3,000,000 years old. This makes sense in that if even a modern person woke up naked in the woods or crashed on a primitive island a la "Lost" what you would rely on for building materials and tools would obviously be wood and stone. It is well documented that we can divide the past into stages as in The Stone Age, The Bronze Age, and The Iron Age.

This too makes sense because Stone can be found lying around and in some stones, copper and other metals used in Bronze, have a low melting point, under 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Bronze can be made in some open wood fires. It is much easier to make than Iron, which requires roughly 3000 degrees which is a quantum leap in technology requiring closed furnaces usually with coal mined for fuel and a compressed air system to "fan the flames". Iron is easier than Steel and so on. Put yourself in their shoes or just review history, why would you make stone tools when Bronze was readily available? Do you see many Bronze or even Iron tools down at your local hardware store? NO. So it would be unlikely to find many stone tools in archaeological sites in Egypt if they also had even Bronze, let alone Steel. We have found copper tools and that makes sense alongside stone tools because it is the next step, denoting a period of transition on a logical path of progression.

So the likelihood that any ancient Stone Age or early Bronze Age culture had metal machinery of any kind, let alone a manufacturing infrastructure capable of producing construction size machinery or semiconductors is so low as to be approaching the absurd.

Did the ancients know things we no longer know? Of course! because stone was all they had and there was a 3,000,000 year legacy of experience and development to draw on. Also societies were neither democratic nor capitalistic and The State, headed by Clerics and Pharaohs in the case of Egypt, was fabulously wealthy and powerful. Combining religion with military might it was not a major problem to enlist not a dozen or two like in modern times, but 10s of thousands of workers working not a 40 hour week for less than a year or three, but sunup to sundown 24/7 for decades and expense be damned. That hard won expertise became superfluous once metals and large centers of civilization sprang up all over.

It is as logical as why disparate cultures all built pyramids. If you let sand flow from your closed palm it becomes obvious that the conical shape is the most naturally stable form when you have no fasteners or adhesives. An extremely important line in the video you linked is (paraphrased)

"None of the beavers all around the world know each other, yet they all build essentially the same kinds of dams". It is because it is what works. The Laws of Physics are the same all over the Earth, and now we know, elsewhere as well.

It was found that Egyptians had electricity.

- Light bulb
- and that they had batteries or methods to produce electricity.

A test was made with Vinegar, and it gave already 5 volts.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/9962...y-electricity/

ping Xeratul - It isn't known that they had working batteries, not on the evidence of what may be a single cell. A battery consists of many cells. It isn't even certain that what was found, 3 items moderately close together but not as an assembly, was even a cell. Five volts would be impressive IF it had any real power which is Voltage times Amperage. This is why, for example your car battery is rated in amp/hours and not just by voltage. Connect nine "D" cells in series ( 9 x 1.5 = 13.5 votls ) and just try to get your engine's starting motor to even click let alone turn over the engine. Not gonna happen, yet motors are vastly more efficient than incandescent light bulbs. Incidentally with vinegar used as an electrolyte the device might produce 1.1 volts, not 5.

Additionally, the very fact that your link even mentions, let alone credits Erich Von Däniken is highly suspect as he is a thoroughly debunked nutjob and/or self-promoter. Let me be absolutely clear regarding Daniken, we are not talking about a man who simply has an untested and unpopular hypothesis. It has been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that he not only altered data but completely fabricated whole sections of "Chariots of the Gods".

Here's a comment from Carl Sagan that I chose because he's one of the least condemning of Daniken's critics because he was a nice guy.

It is not my purpose in responding here to dampen your enthusiasm for amazing events. I'd far rather excite you to invest your time in provably real areas that are actually far more amazing. If you lean towards electricity how about this !!!

Stratospheric Red Sprites Finally Caught on Film from the Ground