A Transistor Treasure Trove

Buy your copy of The Transistor from our Bookstore here!

This little book by Geoffrey Evans was recently sent to me via the office of our Publishers, Warners, and I have really grown to like it (the book, not the office). On just 158 pages, and richly-illustrated, it recounts, not only a wonderfully concise and relevant story of the key role of this ‘grain of sand that changed the world’, but it also offers a neat summary of the history of radio, sound recording, product design, television and video, including a look at the major (and many minor) personalities in these areas. The ‘solid-state-revolution’ sketched out here takes in applications from military and medical, to computers, telescopes, materials science, the internet, big data and much, much more. The illustrations and pictures of old equipment are a joy to behold and will bring back memories for many. I particularly liked how the author makes this text ‘interactive’ by inviting us to speculate on our likely technical future – through a well-thought-out list of predictions to fill in. It is not a brand-new publication, and the editing and structure are, at times, idiosyncratic, but that does not seem to matter, because you learn so much from the text and the many text-boxes, enlarging one aspect or another.

Highly recommended in the shack when the bans are a little quiet.

Evans, G. (2016, repr. 2017): The Transistor (Redwoods Publishing)

ISBN 978-0-9547455-5-4

Click here to buy the The Transistor from our Bookstore!