Wednesday, October 4, 2023

Sunburst and Luminary -- A Poem about Transistors and ICs

 
Sunburst and Luminary by Don Eyles has a lot of the kind of color that helps the reader understand what was going on technologically during the 1960s.  For example, there is this poem about integrated circuits (you don't get to use "poem" and "integrated circuits" in the same sentence very often): 

The transistor's a marvelous invention
Replaced the tube convention
        Found its niche
        To amplify or switch
Whatever the designer's intention. 

But the breakthrough was the IC
Integrated monolithically
        It became pivotal
        As computers went digital 
With increasing complexity. 

Eyles tells us that this poem was written by hardware designer Jayne Partridge, and appears in Eldon Hall's write-up of the Apollo Guidance Computer and the decision to use ICs in it: 

1 comment:

  1. I love limericks and making them up. Here's another one:

    There once was a man from Nantucket
    Who put too much power in circuit
    His plate glowed red and his batt'ry went dead
    And he threw it all in a bucket.

    So there it lay in the bucket
    The tube and the wires and what not
    And he stormed and he fumed
    'Til his anger consumed and he said,
    "If I could I'd take all and just chuck it.

    But hearing it all came his sister
    Who said, "you need bigger resistor"
    Either that or I'd reckon you ought to now beckon
    That guy with the fancy transistor.

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