Michael Riordan and Lillian Hoddeson, Crystal Fire: The Invention of the Transistor and the Birth of the Information Age (1997)

This is a technically informed, empirically minded, and engaging account of an epoch-making invention (arguably one of the two or three most important inventions of the 20th century, other candidates being nuclear technology and antibiotics). Riordan and Hoddeson spend the bulk of their book on the technical aspects of work on the transistor, and they do this well, though after a point I had trouble following (for example, the apparently important difference between point contact and junction transistors). Along the way, they also pen deft portraits of the key figures and key organizations, above all, the incomparable mid-century Bell Labs. In terms of the technical aspects, both theoretical work (much of it coming from Europe) in quantum mechanics, in particular the behavior of electrons, and practical work, in obtaining purified forms of germanium and silicon and manipulating the flow of electrons, were crucial. Serendipity played a more frequent role than I would have imagined. Some of my take-aways and reflections include the following: 1) until reading this book, I hadn't fully understood that the key function of vacuum tubes and of transistors was to boost signals (even after reading the book, I didn't quite grasp how either of them did this). 2) nor did I understand that both of these technologies were developed with the transmission of telephone calls in mind (the primary business of ATT, Bell Labs' sponsor, after all). Their use in computers was, initially, a byproduct. For this reason, the full magnitude of the transistor revolution only dawned on people, including its inventors, a couple of decades after its invention in 1947. 3) the book did an excellent job illustrating the role of both collaboration and competition in scientific progress. 4) I was reminded of Robert Gordon's important book The Rise and Decline of American Growth. Gordon emphasizes the years 1920 to 1950 as a period of unprecedented and since unmatched growth in productivity. I don't think he explains exactly why that was the case (though come to think of it, he may attribute the surge in productivity to a more fully worked out application of electric power). I'm pretty sure he doesn't discuss the development of the transistor. Of course, while the transistor was invented at the tail end of this period, it only came into widespread use in the 1950s and 1960s. Its proliferation has coincided not with the increase, or even just maintenance, of productivity growth, but with its slowing down. Of course, it has changed entertainment, culture, news, politics, and much more quite dramatically. So a bit of a conundrum there. 5) this is not an original point, but this book, in conjunction with Gordon's, has led me to think of the transistor as a third "general purpose technology" of the last 200 years, alongside the steam engine and electricity.