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Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

#21

Post by phkahler »

woodruffw wrote: post #12
cubefox wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is interesting to think about about alternative history here: If microchip technology had never been invented for some reason, what would we have developed instead? What is the next best computing technology?

I think we would have ended up here anyways: to assume that the silicon transistor would not have been invented without Morris Tanenbaum is to succumb to the Great Man theory[1]. The reality is that Morris was a brilliant man whose life intersected in the right place and time with the arc of history; we should celebrate his life and contributions for that, and not because we think that we'd be stuck in 1950 without t…

Not sure but I think the question is more like "what if physics didn't allow transistors?" rather than if one guy didn't invent them. What's the next best thing, and how far would we have pushed it?

Re: Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

#22

Post by tgv »

FeistySkink wrote: post #19
tgv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's lived and worked in The Netherlands since over 35 years, possibly 40.

Does that make him Dutch?

It's 52 years: https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/cv.pdf, but he's still an American citizen. You be the judge, but it's certainly not unfair to call him American-Dutch.

Re: Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

#23

Post by dakial1 »

"Despite Tanenbaum’s early work on silicon transistors, AT&T did not support further research or advancement of the technology. At the time, Bell Labs was the research arm of AT&T. Although Bell Labs had “a significant technological lead in silicon transistor technology, it stopped doing proper research in the field—partly because it just wasn’t immediately relevant to AT&T’s business—so silicon transistor technology, including the integrated circuit, was done by Intel and Texas Instruments instead,” Tanenbaum said in a 1999 oral history conducted by the IEEE History Center."

Good call AT&T! /s

Re: Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

#24

Post by helloooooooo »

FeistySkink wrote: post #19
tgv wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's lived and worked in The Netherlands since over 35 years, possibly 40.

Does that make him Dutch?

Is calling any permanent resident who is not a citizen Dutch reasonable?

Re: Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

#25

Post by andyjohnson0 »

The tree of technological and scientific developments that enable almost all of us - on this site - to do what we do, narrows back to just a few people and their work. It seems that this man was one of them. Thank you Mr Tannenbaum.

Black bar.

Re: Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

#27

Post by Turing_Machine »

dakial1 wrote: post #23

"Despite Tanenbaum’s early work on silicon transistors, AT&T did not support further research or advancement of the technology. At the time, Bell Labs was the research arm of AT&T. Although Bell Labs had “a significant technological lead in silicon transistor technology, it stopped doing proper research in the field—partly because it just wasn’t immediately relevant to AT&T’s business—so silicon transistor technology…

> so silicon transistor technology, including the integrated circuit, was done by Intel and Texas Instruments instead

Right. Tanenbaum invented the silicon transistor (which of course was a major accomplishment -- definitely worthy of honor), but what most people think of as a "microchip" (i.e., an integrated circuit with multiple components on the same piece of semiconductor) was invented almost simultaneously by Jack Kilby at Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce (then at Fairchild, later a cofounder of Intel).

Re: Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

#29

Post by petra »

cubefox wrote: post #10
woodruffw wrote: post #6

It's incredibly humbling to be reminded how young this field of our is: this site and everything its presence implies (about the Internet, global communication, computers) would not exist were it not for the work of a very-recently-deceased engineer. Very few other fields (aerospace and modern pharmacology, among them) can say the same thing.

It is interesting to think about about alternative history here: If microchip technology had never been invented for some reason, what would we have developed instead? What is the next best computing technology?

Possibilities:

Mems vacuum tubes.

Nano electromechanical relays: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoelectromechanical_relay

Re: Morris Tanenbaum, inventor of the silicon transistor, has died

#30

Post by hutzlibu »

phkahler wrote: post #21
woodruffw wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we would have ended up here anyways: to assume that the silicon transistor would not have been invented without Morris Tanenbaum is to succumb to the Great Man theory[1]. The reality is that Morris was a brilliant man whose life intersected in the right place and time with the arc of history; we should celebrate his life and contributions for that, and not because we think that we'd be stuck in 1950 without t…

Not sure but I think the question is more like "what if physics didn't allow transistors?" rather than if one guy didn't invent them. What's the next best thing, and how far would we have pushed it?

If transistors would not be possible, then lots of other stuff would not exist, like solar panels or digital cameras. Handy electricity conversion, etc.

I think alternativly we would have miniaturized vacuum tubes much more, the ones that powered computers before transistors (and made them huge)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum-tube_computer

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