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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: i-node who wrote (870614)	7/5/2015 9:23:25 PM
From: J_F_Shepard	Respond to of 1578301

You're talking about semiconductors as if they weren't used in TV sets and radios. I was a kid, but when I got first my first transistor radio I knew it was transformative and so did everyone else. The transistors that were used in radios in the late 50;s sold for much less than a dollar a transistor.....those radio's were toys..... Color TV, not solid state, did not happen until the late 50's, I was working for Philco at the time and RCA was the first out with a color TV picture tube (a 3 gun tube).....it's weakness was the color red which was poor. Sylvania invented the first color tube with strong red about 1966 by using the rare earth element Europium as a dopant... The sets, however, were still mainly vacuum tube.... Semiconductors became a huge business when they replaced magnetic cores for computer memory.......at that point the race was on for the business market..... The military market was already active and they would pay any price for what they wanted.....heat seeking missiles used indium antiminide immersed in liquid nitrogen to detect heat sources.....they were manufactured in a secure section of Philco's factory. Business computers (IBM) starting in the 70's would pay military prices for the chips they needed but the consumer market was a non issue for major manufacturers.......