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.