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The Printing Press and the Bell Labs Transistor
Prior to the mid-fifteenth century, most books produced in Western Europe were copied by hand. For this reason, among others, the production of texts tended to be both slow and limited. Johann Gutenberg's pioneering efforts with the printing press, however, greatly increased the availability of books and other textual materials, contributing directly to the Renaissance, the rebirth of learning across the European continent.
Five centuries later, information technology took another leap forward with the development of the transistor. Created by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1947, the transistor is a switch that is used to turn electronic signals on and off. Modern computers contain millions of these transistor switches; all actions performed by a computer are the result of a unique combination of transistors set to on or off.
Binary code represents these on/off combinations as 1s and 0s, with each digit standing for one transistor. Binary code is gathered into bytes, which are groups of 8 digits representing 8 transistors. When you type a letter on a computer keyboard, the letter is converted into a specific code. For example, the binary code of the character "G" is 01000111.
Binary codes can be stored, reproduced, manipulated, and transmitted at almost the speed of light. As you read text on the screen of your computer, phone, or other electronic device, you are seeing the visual representation of binary coding, enabled by transistors. You are also experiencing the digital revolution, a transformation as seminal as the one instigated by Gutenberg and other early printers.
Note: Attached below are a transistor and a piece of metal type.
Lloyd Schermer, Artist |