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UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: James Easton <pulsar@compuserve.com>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 21:22:59 -0400
Fwd Date: Thu, 04 Sep 1997 08:11:54 -0400
Subject: Re: American Computer - Update

Regarding...

>From: Stig_Agermose@online.pol.dk (Stig Agermose)
>Date: Wed, 3 Sep 1997 18:16:23 +0200
>Subject: American Computer: Sensational Update (If True)

Stig wrote:

>On September 2 1997 Bob Wolf posted these epoch-making (if true)
>pieces of information to the Current Encounters mailing list, and
>today, September 3, Francis Ridge forwarded them to the members of
>the Project 1947 list including me.


>Case in point, straight from the source at ACC who researched it
>(again, in response to the letter below, I called ACC's head who put
>me in touch with the guy and holy mackeral!) and lived it!

>Here it is, World, for everyone to hear, from the horse's mouth
>(updated today, September 2, 1997 with additional facts), 'His
>statement' (slightly expurgated - he talks very quickly):

>"Bell Laboratories published all the historical material James Easton
>found, AFTER the fact in 1948 and 1949. It's all a smokescreen
>fabrication designed to hide the real history. Do not expect Bell
>Labs to sit tight on this, they may even sue me for revealing this:
>but the fact is, there is NO INFORMATION ABOUT TRANSISTOR RESEARCH
>actually available nor that is bonafide nor provided by Bell Labs
>PRIOR TO Sepetember of 1947.


Stig,

For an excellent and easily accessible overview of "The History of the
Transistor", I can recommend the Lucent Technologies site at:

http://www.lucent.com/ideas2/heritage/transistor/


Hopefully permitted some brief extracts:

"In 1945, Bell Labs' executive director, Mervin Kelly, boosted Bell
Labs semiconductor research by putting together a world class team of
solid-state physicists. Realizing that the vacuum tube had surpassed
its potential as a practical amplifying device, this team of Bell Labs
scientists went to work on developing a new means of amplification.

As Lee De Forest saw the potential of attaching a third electrode to
John Ambrose Felming's vacuum tube rectifier, the Bell Labs scientists
speculated that by adding a third electrode to the semiconductor
detector, they would be able to control the amount of current flowing
through the silicon. If their theories proved correct, the resulting
device would amplify in the same way as the vacuum tube with much less
power consumption and in a fraction of the space".


The PN Junction

"What the Bell Labs scientists discovered was that silicon was
comprised of two distinct regions differentiated by the way in which
they favored current flow. The area that favored positive current flow
they named "p" and the area that favored negative current flow they
named "n." More importantly, they determined the impurities that
caused these tendencies in the "p" and "n" regions and could reproduce
them at will. With the discovery of the P-N junction and the ability
to control its properties, the fundamental ground work was laid for
the invention of the transistor. This Bell Labs discovery was
instrumental in the development of all semiconductor devices to come".


"Three of the physicists working on the investigation team were John
Bardeen and Walter Brattain, both of whom had been researching the
properties of semiconductors, and William Shockley, whose specialty
was solid state physics. Combining their expertise, they conducted
experiments with another type of semiconductor-- germanium-- a grayish
white element with brilliant metallic luster and a crystalline
structure with a diamond pattern.

During one experiment, Brattain observed that a germanium crystal that
was set in contact with two wires two-thousandths of an inch apart was
amplifying. After exclaiming, "Eureka! This thing's got current
gain!", he informed his colleagues that many years of research by many
Bell Labs scientists finally paid off. They had invented the first
semiconductor device that could do the work of a vacuum tube: the
transistor".

"Dr. John Bardeen, Dr. Walter Brattain, and Dr. William Shockley
discovered the transistor effect and developed the first device in
December, 1947, while the three were members of the technical staff
at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. They were awarded the Nobel
Prize in physics in 1956".



"The research work to understand what was really going on in the
simplest semiconductors, silicon and germanium, finally resulted in
the breakthrough. After fourteen years of work, I was beginning to
lose faith".

Walter Brattain.



>It didn't exist, because the materials researched to fabricate the
>Transistor came from the Roswell, New Mexico crash site of the
>"extraterrestrial craft" discovered jointly by the Air Force and Army
>there in mid 1947, accidentally revealed to the public and then
>retracted, by a public relations spokesperson at that Testing Base.

What, germanium and silicon came from a "flying saucer"!?

It's important to realise that all of the research by Bell Labs and
others was to find a replacement for the larger, power hungry and
expensive vacuum tubes. The transistor wasn't a new concept, it was
the same concept, only in a more useful and cost-effective product.

Obviously, this wasn't, as suggested, an area of research which no-one
had ever thought about, until someone brought in pieces of a
infinitely more advanced technology.


>The Department of the Army directed Bell under contract at the time
>to pursue radar research into objects of extraterrestrial origin,
>known today as Roswell Extraterrestrial Landers Number 1 and 2 (there
>were two devices, by the way, REL#1 and REL#2).

Someone better tell Col. Corso. ;)


>Note, however, that at least one of the craft still exists, is in
>cold storage, and is fully functional, albeit, not fully understood
>even to this day. Attempts to fly it have suffered from lack of
>understanding of its control surfaces and drive."

I think we saw this in ID4. <g>

Interesting story, Bob, Francis and Stig, worth of course highlighting.

As I mentioned, there's considerable material available on the history
of the research into semiconductors and the ongoing development of
"switching" technology. Michael Davis has referenced an article in the
24 July 1997 issue of Nature magazine, for example.

The book reviewed by Nature was, "Crystal Fire: The Birth of The
Information Age".

One of the authors is Lillian Hoddeson, who had written, "In the late
seventies, my history focus was solid-state research at Bell
Laboratories leading to the transistor. That research resulted in a
series of articles published in major journals in the history of
science. Michael Riordan and I are presently drawing on that research
(as well as a great deal of other research) in writing our popular
history of the transistor, to be published in the spring of 1997 by
Norton, Crystal Fire: the Birth of the Information Age".

Lillian is an eminent scientist and historian and perhaps her
considerable scientific research would be the definitive word on this
somewhat endearing, if not eclectic, aspect of the "Roswell" story.


I'll see if I can obtain a copy and it might help place all of this
in perspective.



James.
E-mail: pulsar@compuserve.com