Valvepunk

Stephen

Banned
Do you think it is feasable to avoid the invention of the transistor and have a transistorless world using valves for electronics for the rest of the 20th century. And if so what do you think it would look like?
 
Do you think it is feasable to avoid the invention of the transistor and have a transistorless world using valves for electronics for the rest of the 20th century. And if so what do you think it would look like?
No, I think tubes would have continued to have been used instead.:D
 

Sachyriel

Banned
Cellphones are full-body wear that are only used for high-powered executives. They have one video game on their small CRT screen: Tetris. Their reception changes if you sneeze. One company makes them: Research in Motion, however some other companies, like Sony Computational Corporation, are getting in on the action. Some dreamers dream of a day when the power-requirements of cellphones go down enough that they can attach a camera to the top of the CRT screen and have portable video calling.

Portable video calling is the hallmark of retro-future; if your characters can dream of it you're damn close to having a good "punk" atmosphere.
 
tubes are just too fragile.

There is a story of one of the bigger pre-transistor computers, where a guy in a cart continually trundled up and down the computer replacing burnt out tubes.

Sure, you can make tubes (a little) better, but the reliability AND cost will suck. Besides being huge.

So, basically you're stuck in a mid-sixties electronics era.
 

Stephen

Banned
Yes the limited minituristion of electonic whould leave the world in the analog age. But you can still make color TV's and video recorders with analog technology.

It is said that you can not develop the transistor without a good understanding of quantum mechanics so as quantum theory does not make any sence neither do transistors!

The main question I was asking was how feasable would a timeline with no or delayed transitor invention be. And what kind of consequences would lack of digital technology have on culture and lack of smart weapons have on war and geopolitics?
 
I know this subject has been brought up on Non-Pol Chat a couple of times, but normally only as a sci-fi literary roundtable.

The main question I was asking was how feasable would a timeline with no or delayed transitor invention be. And what kind of consequences would lack of digital technology have on culture and lack of smart weapons have on war and geopolitics?

Is the invention (or not) of the transistor the important thing, or is it the miniaturisation of the original transistor boards (ala Apollo), or is it the invention of the silicon chip that matters? This is all very confusing to a non-techhead like myself.
 
I'm sorry - but, valves are infeasible for computing outside Hollywood. That's because they break too much, and computers are really, really, really complicated. Your computer ends spending virtually all its time broken.

EDIT: Being broken alot was a real challenge for early computers, even with reliable underpinnings.

Magniac asked:
Is the invention (or not) of the transistor the important thing, or is it the miniaturisation of the original transistor boards (ala Apollo), or is it the invention of the silicon chip that matters? This is all very confusing to a non-techhead like myself.

Yes, of course - all of the above. Transistors let you build smaller, cheaper, and especially more reliably. Silicon chips let us industrialize computer and logic production, literally stamping them out in foundries, using maps of lots and lots of circuits.
 
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Yes, of course - all of the above. Transistors let you build smaller and especially more reliably. Silicon chips let us industrialize computer and logic production, literally stamping them out in foundries, using maps of lots and lots of circuits.

I'm sure someone could come up with a PoD that kept us at the early stage of transistor technology and prevented the rise of anything that resembled micro-computing for a long, long time.

A Cuban Missile Crisis War which left the world with functioning (yet bankrupt) societies outside of Europe and the Communist Bloc springs to mind as the way to prevent silicon chips, f'rinstance.
 
Man-power

There are some amusing pictures on the net of 40s 50s era proposed "Space Stations". They are absolutely huge because so little can be automated. A man has got to be there behind the spy camera on a spy satellite etc. Definitely the "Space Age" would take a knock without the transistor.
 
Aren't there microtubes though? Still not really a great replacement for a trasistor but I think there some that are only 2-3 larger than you average transistor, doesn't tsmething like that leave soom room for advancement in electronics?
 
Aren't there microtubes though? Still not really a great replacement for a trasistor but I think there some that are only 2-3 larger than you average transistor, doesn't tsmething like that leave soom room for advancement in electronics?

I know there was a desktop calculator made with cold cathode vacuum tubes, the Anita VII or VIII of the UK. There are minature tubes the size of a pencil top called Nuvistors, usually used for UHF work and they were metal cased. I know during World War II, metal cased tubes were used because they were more durable.
 
I know there was a desktop calculator made with cold cathode vacuum tubes, the Anita VII or VIII of the UK. There are minature tubes the size of a pencil top called Nuvistors, usually used for UHF work and they were metal cased. I know during World War II, metal cased tubes were used because they were more durable.
You mean there were miniature Tubes/Valves, called Nuvistors, however the last of said stock was bought up & used by the British high end audio company Musical Fidelity for a extremely high end amplifier (the Nu-Vista 300 Power/Pre-amp combo, of which 500 were made) a couple of years ago...
 
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