Just go to http://soldersmoke.com. On that archive page, just click on the blue hyperlinks and your audio player should play that episode.
http://soldersmoke.com
Thanks to Armand WA1UQO for alerting me to this. I really liked the book -- "Crystal Fire" -- that this 1999 video is loosely based on. I'm also a fan of the narrator, Ira Flatow, whose melodious voice is heard each week on NPR's excellent "Science Friday" radio show. A few observations and thoughts on the video: -- I liked the irreverant Calypso song "Hell's Bells Laboratory." It looks like those folks had a lot of fun. And wow, Shockly's secretary was named Betty Sparks. TRGHS. -- I have the same big Variac on my bench. And I have one of those "third hand" devices. -- I'd like to build my own replica of the point contact device with the triangular piece of lucite and the gold foil. -- While Shockley seems to be the real bad guy in this story (he seems to have all the bad characteristics of David Sarnoff, Lee DeForest, and Steve Jobs), I liked the his use of "physical intuition" to understand devices and the problems they were meant to solve. -- The image of the two Japanese founders of Sony working in the late 1940's in a bombed out department store was very powerful. -- Although I came on the scence a bit later, I WAS one of those kids who used a transistor radio and an earphone to surreptitiously listen to rock-and-roll music. -- "More transistors are made each year than raindrops fall on California." Hmmm.... More info here: http://www.pbs.org/transistor/ Extra interviews: http://www.pbs.org/transistor/tv/index.html
Bill Shockley was NOT a team player. If he had, silicon valley probably would not have existed. All these competitive Innovators kicked off a revolution.
"SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" is now available as an e-book for Amazon's Kindle.
Here's the site:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V9FIVW
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Bill Shockley was NOT a team player. If he had, silicon valley probably would not have existed. All these competitive Innovators kicked off a revolution.
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