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Crystal Fire
- The Birth of the Information Age
- Narrated by: Dennis McKee
- Length: 12 hrs and 53 mins
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Crystal Fire
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Before cell phones that fit in the palm of your hand and slim laptops that fit snugly into briefcases, computers were like strange, alien vending machines. They had cryptic switches, punch cards, and pages of encoded output. But in 1975, a young engineering wizard named Steve Wozniak had an idea: What if you combined computer circuitry with a regular typewriter keyboard and a video screen?
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Publisher's summary
On December 16, 1947, two physicists at Bell Laboratories, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of germanium half an inch long. The electrical power coming out of that piece of germanium was 100 times stronger than what went in. In that moment, the transistor was invented and the information age began.
Crystal Fire recounts the story of the transistor team at Bell Labs, led by William Shockley, who shared the Nobel Prize with Bardeen and Brattain. While his colleagues went on to other research, Shockley grew increasingly obsessed with the new gadget. He went on to form the first semiconductor company in what would become Silicon Valley.
Above all, Crystal Fire is a tale of the human factors in technology: the pride and jealousies coupled with scientific and economic aspirations that led to the creation of modern microelectronics and ignited the greatest technological explosion in history.
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Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Dennis M Danzik
- 03-09-23
A Winner
If you enjoy studying solid state electronics or just simply want to understand the origins of Silicon Valley, this book is a great foundation.
highly recommended
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- David DeLean
- 01-27-23
Good book, terrible recording
If you are a STEM person you will find this a very interesting listen. Unfortunately, the terribly recorded reading of this book makes it difficult to listen to.
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