The first transistor
During the period 1904 to1947, the vacuum tube was the electronic device of interest and development. In 1904, the vacuum-tube diode was introduced by J. A. Fleming. Shortly thereafter, in 1906, Lee De Forest added a third element, called the control grid, to the vacuum diode, resulting in the first amplifier, the triode. In the following years, radio and television provided great stimulation to the tube industry. Production rose from about 1 million tubes in 1922 to about 100 million in 1937. In the early 1930s the four- element tetrode and the five-element pentode gained prominence in the electron-tube industry. In the years to follow, the industry became one of primary importance, and rapid advances were made in design, manufacturing techniques, high-power and high-frequency applications, and miniaturization.
三极管的发明，和工业界的需求有密切联系。radio and television provided great stimulation to the tube industry.
看现在的AI需求，对于新计算机体系结构也会有新的需求，比如memory
system的演进，可能会有比较革命性的变革，比如pim。
On December 23, 1947, however, the electronics industry was to experience the advent of a completely new direction of interest and development. It was on the afternoon of this day that Dr. S. William Shockley, Walter H. Brattain, and John Bardeen demonstrated the amplifying action of the first transistor at the Bell Telephone Laboratories. The original transistor (a point-contact transistor) is shown in Fig. 2. The advantages of this three-terminal solid-state device over the tube were immediately obvious: It was smaller and lightweight; it had no heater requirement or heater loss; it had a rugged construction; it was more efficient since less power was absorbed by the device itself; it was instantly available for use, requiring no warm-up period; and lower operating voltages were possible. Note that this chapter is our first discussion of devices with three or more terminals. You will find that all amplifiers (devices that increase the voltage, current, or power level) have at least three terminals, with one controlling the flow or potential between the other two.
为什么这些创新都是来自美国，Bell实验室，中国到现在为止，始终没有这样原创性的工作，抄永远是跟在别人屁股后面的。这个原型满足了一些基本特性需求：
- smaller and lightweight
- it had no heater requirement or heater loss
- it had a rugged construction
- it was more efficient since less power was absorbed by the device itself
- it was instantly available for use, requiring no warm-up period;
- and lower operating voltages were possible
在研发过程中，应该是有这些目标牵引进行设计探索的。所以从底层原理出发，解决工业界比较强烈的需求，可以做出一些原创性的事情。