DBWI: Transistors not invented in 1930.

[ac220v]

I'm often wondering what our world would be like if Oleg Losev wouldn't have got proper funding to test some of his more interesting ideas (more than probable in 20's Russia), leading to resistance-transfer effect in semiconductors not being noticed for a few more decades... No Nobel Prize for Abram Ioffe, sure... Less brutal WWII probably, without guided bombs, radars, rockets not being new gods of war... Anything else? And when they would be invented?

EDIT, OOC: Although it isn't in WP article, Losev indeed had mentioned experiments with three-electrodes setup which could work as transistor, had he used Ge or Si instead of cheaper SiC.

 

[ac220v]

Probably would be easier for allies too, all practical tech being developed mostly by Siemens... No need for British and Americans to catch up, or for Soviets to rely on an irrepaceable equipment bought during peacetime...

 

[ac220v]

On the other hand, if Adlerangriff wasn't as successful as it was with new guided bombs and Hitler would have cancelled Sealion... (not that I have any sympathy to Nazis, but that travesty of an assault simple shouldn't had happened. How long it took to obliterate the assault force, 5 days?)

No greatest British victory since Waterloo is disappointing of course, but what are chances of USSR not remaining neutral until 1943 in this case and would it made any difference?

OOC: Do any attempted Sealions qualify one as n00b or only victorous ones?v

 

[Mr_ Bondoc]

The problem with the scenario is that ignores the creation of BIM (British Intelligent Machines) at Bletchley Park under Alan Turing in 1941. If Oleg Osev didn't create the transistor, surely Turing. Too many people were already researching the idea. Sooner or later it would have been discovered.

But one small difference is that Polish programmers led by Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rózycki and Henryk Zygals might not have detected Germany's plans for war in 1939.

 

[Doug M.]

The great Carlos Yu did some spadework for this over on soc.history.what-if a few years back. A couple of quotes:

The first electromagnetic pulse weapons deployed by the Germans were of the vircator type. The vircator, or the virtual cathode oscillator tube, was developed as an advance on the German magnetron tube, itself copied from captured British radar sets. Through an ingenious tuning of its resonant cavity, the early vircator could send over a Megawatt of power in the radio frequencies in less than a thousandth of a second. Later vircators were only limited by their capacitor storage.

Correlating the times of avionic system failures with spikes on the Chain Home radar system, British scientist R.V. Jones determined the probable nature of this new weapon by the fall of 1943. In response, US and British flight crews rapidly began implementing Faraday cages around their vital electronic components with chicken wire and mesh. Due to a fortuitous modular design, damaged US avionics could be quickly replaced on the ground, while similar British avionics could not. On the other hand, production cycles of newer, hardened components were necessarily faster in Britain (although some unique American parts were flown in via Gander).

British flight crews called the new German devices "imps", after the acronym EMP, standing for electromagnetic pulse, while American flight crews nicknamed them "flashbulbs". But the second type of electromagnetic pulse weapon developed by the Germans was called by
the airmen of both countries the "Heisenbomb", after the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who was widely believed to have been the man responsible for its invention...

And of course:

Colonel Kanji Ishiwara of the Kwangtung Army rapidly realized the advantages of having an "all-wireless" infantry force in the endless China war. The Nihon Musen Company, an affiliate of the German radio manufacturer Telefunken, built the first models, which Ishiwara found to be too heavy. "The radio, like a death in battle, should be as light as a feather." Nihon Musen began miniaturizing the components to meet the exacting colonel's demands, creating a standard durable 750-gram multichannel model in early 1939. By this time several hundred earlier units were already in the field, being used with great tactical success against the Chinese.

In the aftermath of Nomonhan later that year, radio mania swept through the Army like wildfire. It was an awkward response to an overwhelming strategic defeat. Younger officers latched onto the battle's few tactical successes and imbued them with the mystical glamour so characteristic of early Showa bushido; and while it may have been mere coincidence that the units involved were equipped with radio, older officers were more than happy enough to put the blame on this correctable deficiency. New radio doctrines were devised for armored units, fire control, air support, fighter combat, and even truck convoys. To a German military attache there might seem something "schoolboy" about the IJA's new-found enthusiasm for radio, but while a Japanese soldier newly recruited from the rice fields
might think of a radio as an _o-mamori_, or magic amulet, the Army's doctrines were continually being tested and refined in the cauldron of the Chinese war throughout 1940 and well into 1941. They would prove to be extremely effective elsewhere...

-- for more, go to groups.google.com and enter "silicon jumpstart".


Doug M.

 

[ac220v]

The great Carlos Yu did some spadework for this over on soc.history.what-if a few years back. A couple of quotes:


-- for more, go to groups.google.com and enter "silicon jumpstart".


Doug M.

Quite interesting, and indeed very similar to what I had in mind (with the exception of Axis getting most of the goodies first, of course...)

The problem with the scenario is that ignores the creation of BIM (British Intelligent Machines) at Bletchley Park under Alan Turing in 1941. If Oleg Osev didn't create the transistor, surely Turing. Too many people were already researching the idea. Sooner or later it would have been discovered.

But one small difference is that Polish programmers led by Marian Rejewski, Jerzy Rózycki and Henryk Zygals might not have detected Germany's plans for war in 1939.

While Polish programmers and SIGINT capabilities are and were indeed awesome, probably third or second in the world back then, (Too bad Skladkowski ignored their warnings.), I doubt BIM could invent transistors...

There are two parts in the problem, - first of all you need to notice the effect (not an easy task if all you have is natural impurities in semiconductor) and then to make sense of it... And interest in semiconductors, while indeed widespread in 20s might just die for decades if not reenergized by Losev... And chances what some enthusiasrt fiddling with crystal radio has condensed matter physicist, and good one, working next door are minuscle. Probably it would happen eventually, in 60s maybe... Or it might be first discovered in theory, but 90% of theoreticians would just think it's a neat toy, not useful for any real work...

 

[ac220v]

No greatest British victory since Waterloo is disappointing of course, but what are chances of USSR not remaining neutral until 1943 in this case and would it made any difference?

No one having any ideas on that? Not very probable then. Indeed, while attacking Russia to defeat England does make some Napoleonic sense, Napoleon had lost because of that and while Hitler was rabid russophobe, he wasn't stupid either.

And Russians were quite content with their two archenemies throwing bombs at each other. Rooswelt might talk them into some sort of Pacific adventure, unlikely as it seems, but definitely not before 1943...

So, how Rommel's campaign would look like with most of the attention of the Reich on Mediterranean, but no mobile ILS systems (another big factor in Adlerangriff being a success, most German planes had bad-weather capabilities Americans won't duplicate until after 41... ), worse radio, weaker or no radars, no advanced weaponry?

Edit: Another damn scary butterfly is _nukes_ invented in 30's instead of 1961, sort of like Soviet beam inductors, resurrected by Vavilov in 1937, after reading raher obscure paper written 10 years earlier by one of his colleagues... Of course, Fermi is now remembered for his brilliant work in creating real semiconductor theory instead of Ioffe's crude "Solid Electrolyte Theory" (SET)... But he was close to atom-splitting earlier in his career...
(OOC: "Beam inductors" are lasers, Lise Meitner is butterflied into Siemens and later BIM and re-specializes into condensed matter, Purges were less severe on Soviet scientific community.)