Many thanks to SWLing Post contributor, Dave Zantow, who shares the following video from the Computer History Archives Project YouTube channel:
The SWLing Post
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L.O.L. at 12:02 the start of a V1 german guided bomb by steam catapult (WW II) as illustration of the modern equipment in which the transistors are applied ……
Fascinating how we are living history: I was 16 and in my last year of (grammar) school. Up until then I built one and two valve battery powered radios with my brilliant HL2 triode valve that I used to listen to all wavebands from stations around the world. Then along came ‘the transistor’ . Being young and adventurous, I and my ‘radio’ enthusiast school friend bunny Parkin set about using the ‘red spot’ audio transistor to replace the HL2 with the help of the radio enthusiast magazines – with not a great deal of success – only picking up local stations. Then along came the ‘blue spot’ RF transistor, but by then, very sadly, my school days had come to an end, and it was off into the world of work, and we school pals scattered far and wide. The transistor with its three wires poking out were then the ‘state of the art’ and we felt like geniuses being able to understand them. Those early days set the foundations of my subsequent career phases to this day. And what an adventurous journey it has been as technology advanced in super leaps and bounds to things I can now barely comprehend, having to leave it all to the new ‘young ‘uns’ to get on with it. Its a pity I won’t be alive to see the next 50 years’ developments – at least from this earth!