Detectors Were Nearly Point-Contact Diodes in 1900 — So Why Did the Transistor Take 20 More Years?
jwt0625 · x · 2026-09-07
A reflection on early 20th-century wireless telegraphy detectors, which were essentially point-contact diodes and made solid-state transistors look just a few steps away. But at the time electrons had been discovered only recently, charge values were unknown, quantum mechanics and band theory didn't exist, and Pauli famously dismissed semiconductors in 1931 as "a filthy mess." Crystal consistency was poor and vacuum tubes dominated the market until WW2, when tubes couldn't handle microwave frequencies — only then did serious crystal purification and doping begin. The author poses a counterfactual: would closer collaboration between the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory and Bell Labs have delivered transistors 20 years earlier, or derailed the industrial metallurgy timeline?
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