The world's first computer: characteristics, history of creation and little-known facts. What it was like - the very first computer in the world

In every person, new things arouse interest and admiration. And the world's first steam-powered car is no exception. Of course, such a unit can be called a car at a stretch, but it’s something that doesn’t even come off the tongue. We are accustomed to considering such a vehicle as a compact, easy-to-use and to some extent reliable machine.

And such a “self-propelled cart” from the 19th century does not fit this description at all. In addition, these vehicles are mainly mass-produced to provide transportation for a wide range of people. Of course, this cannot be said about the single copies that were produced at that time.
However, time passed, and no changes were visible in the structure of cars. One might think that the evolutionary mechanisms of this sphere of human activity have reached a dead end. However, with the invention of the internal combustion engine, the situation changed radically.

In 1885, the whole world saw the world's first car, Karl Benz. It was a three-wheeled vehicle that looked more like a “bush” invention. It was powered by a gasoline engine. In the same year, Daimler presented to the world a bicycle with a motor, and a year later a “carriage” powered by a motor.

Karl Benz's first car

The first “swallow”

The first person to invent the automobile was Karl Benz. In 1886 the first patented vehicle appeared. It received wide public recognition, which resulted in the industrial production of such machines. This miracle of technical thought was a three-wheeled vehicle with a 1.7-liter engine, which was horizontal.

The attention was drawn to the huge flywheel located at the rear of the car. Control was carried out using a T-shaped steering wheel.

This stage of history takes a significant leap forward because the founder of Benza offered the buyer a ready-made and usable car.

And Daimler was the very first to launch a functionally equipped automobile engine into production.

The advantage of such a car was the use of water cooling. In this case, the flywheel and engine were located horizontally. The crankshaft was open. From the engine, power was transmitted to a simple differential via chains and a belt, and then to the rear wheels.

The main breakthrough in design in such a car is the use of an intake valve, which had a mechanical drive and ignition using electricity. At the initial stage the engine had 985 cc. centimeters of working volume. Still, this was not enough even to accelerate such a machine.

Therefore, in the first cars they added engine power up to 1.7 liters and installed a two-speed gearbox. Over time, the power increased fourfold and amounted to 2.5. To summarize, I would like to say that the speed of the first car was 19 km/h, which was simply amazing for that time.

However, Karl was not satisfied with such indicators, so he began searching for new options for a technical solution. Such perseverance of the car's progenitor led to the fact that his brainchild competed in the London-to-Brighton Run racing competitions, reaching average speed at 13 km/h. Mass production of the car began in 1890.

Three years later, Benz comes out with a four-wheeler because three wheels have become simply old-fashioned. However, not taking into account the slowness and primitiveness of such machines, they were simple, easy to maintain and repair, and also served for many years.

After a while, two-cylinder modifications appeared. Nevertheless, the founder of the company basically adhered to the original technical solution for his machines.

Despite this, the four-wheeled Benz continued to be produced until 1901. And although this design was imperfect, as many as 2,300 cars were sold.

1909 was a year of great difficulties for Benz. Therefore, against the will of the head of the company, they assembled a group of engineers from France and designed an improved model of the car. They tried to put it into production, but it failed.

And in 1903, Karl decided to forget about his priorities and offered to the market an improved one with an in-line cylinder arrangement. After the launch of this “hybrid” car, the company’s business gradually began to improve.

The Incomprehensible Henry Ford

Henry Ford is considered a true revolutionary in the production of cars that would be accessible to everyone. Ford had a dream. Ever since he created the bicycle-car hybrid in 1896, his idea has been to create a cheap car.

Of course, he was not the first to invent the “horseless carriage.” However, Ford was able to embody in his cars all the achievements of mankind over several centuries.

Ford's success lay in the discoveries of such famous inventors as: Lenoir, Otto and Maybach.

Daimler cars

Daimler in 1886 tried to create his first model, using a horse-drawn carriage as a power element. And although it had the main parts of a primitive design, the single-cylinder engine was the prototype of modern engines.

Daimler turned out to be a restrained and patient designer, unlike the founder of Benz. He did not rush forward, but made his first functional car, called “Daimler”, only in 1889. This car was put into production in 1895.

Together with him, the company was engaged in the production of its own engines. This policy created the prerequisites for the release of new, perfect in technically models. Among them are the French Peugeot and Panhard.

In 1889, the first car was born, which reached a speed of 80 km/h, which was enormous at that time. It consisted of a four-cylinder engine with 24 horsepower. It was a bulky, heavy, difficult to control and unsafe vehicle.

Unique "Mercedes"

Therefore, the company's next steps were aimed at reducing the weight and handling of the car. In this regard, it is not surprising that there were people who would like to have such a car in their garage.

As a result, the world saw a model named after Daimler’s daughter, Mercedes. She, leaving the workshops of the plant in 1900, became the prototype modern cars. Therefore, no matter what the first car was considered interesting, it was only from this time that they began to produce something similar to it.

The first car of the Mercedes series, model 1901

After all, the Mercedes model was able to combine such elements as:

• ability to change gears;
• honeycomb radiator;
• ignition using low voltage and magnet;
• low mounted stamped frame;
• a mechanical drive for the intake valves (which was later abandoned).

The total number of such innovations has given Mercedes many advantages, the main one of which is increased reliability and obedience during its operation. They gained particular reliability, and the quality of the entire “unit” was enthusiastically discussed all over the world. Of course, this model was assembled differently from the first car.

The year 1904 is significant with the appearance of the Mercedes-Simplex. It has an excellent four-cylinder engine (5.3 liters) with side valves. Even today it cannot be called old-fashioned.

It is interesting that Daimler and Benz never saw each other, but they constantly competed. Ironically, in 1926, when the inventors were no longer alive, their companies merged to create Daimler-Benz.

The Australians, in turn, prove that the father-inventor of the first car was not Benz or Daimler, but Siegfried Marcus. It was this inventor who built the car, which has recently been taken under protection as a state monument.

The car was manufactured from 1875 to 1889. It is impossible to determine the exact date until the main components of the chassis and engine have been studied. However, Marcus's car is indeed very ancient.

Therefore, no matter who the first inventor of the car was, Marcus, Daimler and Benz were moving in the same direction and this is the main thing. What do you think?

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At the end of 1941, shortly after the United States entered World War II, the president of IBM sent a telegram to the White House. Like many other leaders of large companies, during this difficult time for the country, Thomas J. Watson offered the services of his corporation to the American government.

It seemed that the company's production potential had little in common with military equipment. The company was primarily focused on the production of such products as typewriters, desktop calculators, and tabulation machines such as those invented by Herman Hollerith in 1890. Watson, who was already 67 years old in 1941, began his career selling cash registers for stores, and gradually turned his company into a concern with a multimillion-dollar turnover. He combined intuition, which allowed him to grasp the most promising areas of technical development, and the talent of an entrepreneur.

Fulfilling its promise to the White House, IBM “entered” the war. Thousands of tabulators, giant machines for sorting punched cards that later became known as data processors, accelerated the flow of paperwork generated by the general mobilization. Watson converted part of the production facilities for the production of rifles and sighting devices for bombing.

However, Watson had another “trump card” hidden in the sleeve of his snow-white shirt. Two years before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, he invested $500,000 of his firm's funds in a daring venture conceived by the young Harvard mathematician Howard Aiken. Tired of endless calculations while working on his doctoral dissertation, Aiken decided to create a universal programmable computer.

Computer “mark-1”

With the blessing of the Navy, and with financial and technical support from IBM, Aiken set about developing a machine based on untested ideas from the 19th century. and reliable technology of the 20th century. The description of the Analytical Engine left by Babbage himself turned out to be more than enough. Aiken's machine used simple electromechanical relays as switching devices; the instructions were written on punched tape. Unlike Stiebitz, Aiken did not recognize the advantages of the binary number system, and data was entered into the machine in the form of decimal numbers.

The development of the Mark 1 went surprisingly smoothly. Having successfully passed the first tests in early 1943, it was then transferred to Harvard University, where it became a bone of contention between its inventor and his boss.

It should be noted that both Aiken and Watson, possessing considerable stubbornness, loved to do everything their own way. At first they disagreed about the appearance of the car. “Mark-1”, reaching a length of almost 17 m and a height of more than 2.5 m, contained about 750 thousand parts connected by wires with a total length of about 800 km. For an engineer, such a colossus was truly a nightmare. Aiken wanted to leave the inside of the machine open so that experts could see its structure. Watson, who, as always, was more concerned about the company's reputation, insisted that the machine be enclosed in a case of glass and shiny stainless steel.

Watson soon handed the machine over to the Navy, and it began to be used to perform complex ballistic calculations, supervised by Aiken himself. “Mark-1” could crunch numbers up to 23 digits long. Addition and subtraction took 0.3 s, and multiplication took 3 s. Such speed was unprecedented. In a day, the machine performed calculations that previously took six months.

In Germany, Konrad Zuse took the lead. In 1941, almost two years before the Mark 1 broke first numbers, and shortly after the creation of the Z1 and Z2 prototypes, Zuse built a working computer-programmed device based on binary system Reckoning. The Z3 was significantly smaller than Aiken's and significantly cheaper to produce.

In 1942, he and the Austrian electrical engineer Helmut Schreyer, who collaborated with Zuse from time to time, proposed creating a completely new type of computer. They decided to convert the Z3 car from electromechanical relays to vacuum ones vacuum tubes. Unlike electromechanical switches, vacuum tubes have no moving parts; they are controlled by electric current in a purely electrical manner. The machine conceived by Zuse and Schreyer was supposed to work a thousand times faster than any of the machines available in Germany at that time.

But the engineers' proposal was rejected. The war had just begun, and Hitler, confident of a quick victory, imposed a ban on all long-term scientific developments. Speaking about the potential applications of their high-speed computer, Zuse and Schreier noted the possibility of using it to decipher coded messages transmitted by the British command via walkie-talkies. At that time, no one knew that the British were developing a machine for the same purpose.

In contrast to Zuse's semi-handicraft work in Berlin, the English project was one of the highest priority developments; it was carried out within the framework of the Ultra project, the goal of which was to find ways to decipher German codes. The idea of ​​the Ultra project arose after a very successful operation carried out by Polish intelligence. Even before the occupation of Poland by Germany in 1939, the Poles managed to create exact copy German cipher machine “Riddle” and send it to England along with a description of the principle of operation.

The “Riddle” device was an electromechanical tele-printer in which messages were encrypted by randomly turning levers. The sender set the teleprinter to a specific key, inserted a set of pins into the cells (similar to what is done on a telephone switch) in accordance with a certain pattern, and printed a message. After this, the machine automatically transmitted the message in encrypted form. Apart from this, the Poles could not say anything to the British. Without a key and a switching circuit (the Germans changed them three times a day), even using another “Riddle” device as a receiver was useless.

Hoping to uncover the secret of “The Riddle,” British intelligence gathered a group of brilliant and somewhat eccentric scientists and placed them in Bletchley Park, a sprawling Victorian-era estate located just outside London, isolating them from the rest of the world.

At first, it was possible to create several decoders that used electromechanical switches of the same type as those used by Konrad Zuse in Berlin, John Stibitz at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and Howard Aiken at Harvard University. These machines worked essentially by “trial and error,” trying endlessly different combinations of German code symbols until some meaningful fragment emerged. However, at the end of 1943, the recluses of Bletchley Park managed to build much more powerful machines. Instead of electromechanical relays, they contained about 2000 electronic vacuum tubes. It is noteworthy that it was precisely this technology that Zuse proposed to create a new machine, which was recognized as inappropriate in Germany. Even the number of lamps was the same. The British called the new car “Colossus”.

Thousands of enemy messages intercepted per day were entered into the “Colossus” memory in the form of symbols encoded on punched tape. The tape was fed into a photoelectric reader, which scanned it at an astonishing rate of 5,000 characters per second, after which the machine matched the encrypted message with the already known Riddle codes to find a match. Each machine had five readers, resulting in an astonishing amount of information being processed per second: about 25,000 characters.

Although the use of vacuum tubes marked a major step forward in the development of computer technology, the Colossus was still a specialized machine, the use of which was limited to deciphering secret codes. However, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in Philadelphia, wartime needs contributed to the creation of a device that, in terms of operating principles and application, was already closer to the theoretical universal machine of Alan Turing (the scientist who made the greatest contribution to the creation of “Colossus”). The Eniak machine (ENIAC, an abbreviation for Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer), like Howard Aiken's Mark 1, was also intended to solve ballistics problems. But in the end, she turned out to be capable of solving problems from a wide variety of areas.

Nowadays, the use of personal computers from Apple, Samsung, HP, Dell and other manufacturers seems absolutely natural to us. However, less than a century ago, the average person had no idea about computer technology, and any developments that are used today on every device became a real breakthrough in the industry.

In this article we will talk about what the very first computers in the world were, who developed them and why, what their capabilities were, and how much of a contribution they made to the development of technology.

Creation of the very first computers

The very first computers in the world took up dozens of square meters, and their weight was measured in tons. Nevertheless, it was they who allowed humanity to come to the compact and convenient devices that we use now. Unfortunately, there is no exact answer to the question of which computer really was the very first computer. However, there are several options for this answer, which we will consider below.

Computer "Mark 1"

The Mark 1, also known as the ASCC (Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator), was designed and built in 1941. The US Navy acted as the customer for the work, and IBM company. Five engineers, led by a representative of the American Army, Howard Aiken, were directly involved in the development of the device. When implementing the project, the developers took the analytical computer created by the famous British inventor Charles Babbage as a basis.

At its core, the Mark 1 was an improved adding machine that could be programmed and did not require human intervention directly in the process of performing calculations. The developers did not take into account all the advantages of the binary number system, which is used by the majority modern computers peace, and forced the machine to operate decimal numbers.

Information was entered into the device using punched paper tapes. “Mark 1” could not perform any conditional transitions, and therefore the code of each program was very long and cumbersome. Software capabilities there was also no way to create loops: to make a loop in the code, the punched tape with the code literally had to be “closed”, connecting its beginning and end.

Physically, ASCC had the following form:

• length about 17 m;
• height over 2.5 m;
• weight about 4.5 tons;
• 765,000 parts;
• 800 km of connecting wires;
• 15-meter shaft ensuring synchronization of the main computing elements;
• electric motor with a power of 4 kW.

At the insistence of the chief executive director Thomas Watson's IBM computer was housed in a stainless steel and glass case, while Howard Aiken insisted on a transparent case to leave the computer's "innards" visible.

"Mark 1" was able to work with numbers whose length was up to 23 digits. It took only 0.3 seconds to subtract and add, 6 seconds to multiply, 15.3 seconds to divide, and more than a minute to perform trigonometric functions and calculate logarithms. At that time, this was amazing speed, allowing one to perform calculations in one day that previously would have taken six months. Therefore, at the final stage of World War II, the device was quite successfully used by the American Navy, after which it worked at Harvard University for about 15 years.

The debate about who created the world's first computer, and when it happened, has not subsided to this day. As you might guess, in the USA the Mark 1 is considered the first “ancestor” of modern PCs. However, in reality, it began to work approximately 2 years after the German engineer Konrad Zuse developed his Z3 computer, presented to the general public in the same 1941 year. In addition, Zuse in principle used more advanced technologies(at least the binary number system), while Mark 1, according to a number of researchers, was outdated even before it was created.

Or still Z3 from Zuse Conrad

Konrad Zuse is one of the most important figures in the history of all computer engineering in the world, although he worked for the benefit of the Third Reich. However, Zuse considered the main motivation in his work to be the bombing of Dresden and other German cities, where the majority of the civilian population remained, by Anglo-American aircraft. Conrad began working on his computers back in the 1930s, while studying at the Berlin Polytechnic University.

His works were based on several revolutionary ideas at that time:

• Memory must be divided: one part of it must be allocated for control data, the other for calculated data.
• Numbers must be represented in the binary number system.
• The machine must be able to work with floating point numbers (whereas Mark 1 only worked with fixed point numbers). It is worth noting that the algorithm for implementing this idea, which Zuse called “semi-logarithmic notation,” is similar to that used on modern computers.

Data was entered into Z3 using punched tape. All instructions that the machine could execute were divided into three groups: arithmetic operators, memory, and also input and output. There were no restrictions on the location of instructions within the punched tape, and there were two specific commands - Ld and Lu - intended for displaying information on the display and reading from the keyboard, respectively.

Both of these instructions stopped the machine so that the operator could write down the result obtained, or enter the required number. This computer did not support conditional transitions, and cycles, as in the case of Mark 1, had to be implemented by fastening the beginning and end of the punched tape.

The main characteristics of the machine are as follows:

• the addition operation was completed in 0.7 seconds;
• multiplication and division operations lasted 3 seconds;
• the device consisted of 2600 telephone relays;
• The Z3 clock speed was approximately 5.33 Hz;
• the device consumed 4 kW of energy;
• its size was approximately half that of the Mark 1;
• its weight was 1 ton.

The machine existed until 1944 and helped the Third Reich make complex calculations for fascist aviation. In 1944, the computer burned down along with the design documentation after one of the regular aerial bombings. However, Konrad Zuse soon created the Z4, and the Z3 computer was reconstructed in 1960 by the Zuse KG company. But that's a completely different story.

Unbiased critics agree that the status of the first free programmable and functional computer in the world rightfully belongs to the Z3, and all attempts to refute this statement are pseudo-patriotic speculation by representatives of individual countries. It is unlikely that an end to these discussions will ever be put to an end, but the following can be said unequivocally: if the Mark 1 was outdated even before its release, then the Z3 implemented many technologies and principles that began to be used in the computers of the future.

The first electronic computer in the USSR and continental Europe

The first computer on the territory of the USSR and continental Europe is considered to be a development called “MESM”, which stands for “Small Electronic Computing Machine”. The device was created in Ukraine, in the computer technology laboratory of the Kyiv Institute of Electrical Engineering. The project was implemented under the leadership of academician Sergei Lebedev.

Sergei Alekseevich, like Zuse, began to think about the creation of a computer back in the 30s of the last century. However, he was able to begin this work in earnest only after the war, and even then not in the most better conditions: The Institute of Electrical Engineering was provided with the premises of a monastery hotel in Feofaniya (at a distance of about 10 km from Kyiv), in a dilapidated house.

However, domestic engineers managed to more or less repair the building, and in just three years create and set up the MESM. At the same time, only 12 engineers worked on the project, as well as 15 installers and technicians who helped them as needed. The car had the following characteristics:

• occupied a room of about 60 square meters;
• could perform 3,000 operations per minute, which was an incredible figure at that time;
• worked on 6000 vacuum tubes, which consumed 25 kW;
• could perform addition, subtraction, division, multiplication and shift, taking into account comparison in absolute value, sign, transfer of numbers from a magnetic drum, transfer of control and addition of commands.

As you might guess, 6,000 lamps provided an almost tropical climate in the room. Nevertheless, until 1957, MESM was successfully used in a large number of scientific research: in the field of space flights, thermonuclear processes, mechanics, long-distance power lines, and so on.

Other very early systems

“Mark 1” and Z3 are not all participants in the dispute for the title of the very first computer in the world. Considering that in the mid-twentieth century the development of computer technologies began to develop exponentially, and computers acquired more and more features of modern computers, many researchers give first place in this kind of “rating” to those systems that will be discussed below.

Eniac computers

The development of the ENIAC electronic digital computer began in 1943 and was completed in 1945. Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania John Eckert and John Mauchly worked on its creation. The order for the development of ENIAC was fulfilled by the US Army, which needed a device for accurately calculating firing tables. But due to the fact that the computer was assembled only towards the end of the war, its purpose had to be changed: from 1947 to 1955, it was used by the US Army Ballistic Research Laboratory, which, using ENIAC, performed various calculations in the development of thermonuclear weapons. It is noteworthy that the first programmers of this computer were six girls.

First commercial units of UNIVAC

Conventionally, the first computer of the UNIVAC series (UNIVersal Automatic Computer I) is considered the first commercial computer in the USA, and the third in the whole world. It was developed by the same John Eckert and John Mauchly, commissioned by the US Air Force and US Army in collaboration with the Census Bureau. Development of UNIVAC I took place from 1947 to 1951. The first computer of this series was officially sold by the Bureau; several dozen other copies appeared in private corporations, government agencies and three American universities. UNIVAC I used BCD arithmetic, 5,200 vacuum tubes consuming 125 kW of electricity, and weighed 13 tons. In one second he could carry out 1905 operations. To accommodate it, a room with an area of ​​35.5 square meters was required.

Apple's first computer

The first computer from the famous “Apple” brand was called “Apple I” and was released in 1976. The key innovation used in the creation of this computer was the ability to enter information from the keyboard with its instant display on the display. During the presentation of the device, Steve Jobs' oratorical and entrepreneurial talent was revealed, while his shy friend Steve Wozniak was directly involved in the development of the Apple I. This computer was completely assembled on circuit board, which consisted of about thirty chips, which is why it is sometimes called the very first full-fledged PC in the world.

The price of the very first computer

The cost of developing the first computers in the world was significantly higher than the current prices for computers in the middle price segment. Thus, about $500,000 was invested in the creation of Mark 1. The Z3 cost the Third Reich 50,000 Reichsmarks, which at the exchange rate of those times was approximately $20,000. The developers requested $61,700 to create ENIAC. And to fulfill the first order for the Apple I, made by Paul Terrell, Jobs and Wozniak needed $15,000. At the same time, the first models of the Apple computer were sold for $666.66 apiece.

Video "The First Computer"

All information provided above was taken from open sources, mainly from the free encyclopedia Wikipedia.

"Mark-1" was based on the use of electromechanical relays and operated with decimal numbers encoded on punched tape. The machine could manipulate numbers up to 23 digits long. It took her 4 seconds to multiply two 23-bit numbers.

But electromechanical relays did not work fast enough. Therefore, already in 1943, the Americans began developing an alternative version of a computer based on vacuum tubes. In 1946, the first electronic computer, ENIAC, was built. Its weight was 30 tons, it required 170 square meters of space to accommodate it. Instead of thousands of electromechanical parts, ENIAC contained 18,000 vacuum tubes. The machine counted in the binary system and performed 5000 addition operations or 300 multiplication operations per second.

Machines using vacuum tubes worked much faster, but the vacuum tubes themselves often failed. To replace them in 1947, Americans John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Bradford Shockley proposed using the stable switching semiconductor transistor elements they had invented.

John BARDIN (23.V 1908) - American physicist, member of the National Academy of Sciences (1954). Born in Madison. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin (1828) and Princeton University. In 1935 - 1938 he worked at Harvard University, in 1938 - 1941 - at the University of Minnesota, in 1945 - 1951 - at Bell Telephone Laboratories, and from 1951 - professor at the University of Illinois.

The works are devoted to solid state physics and superconductivity. Together with W. Brattain, he discovered the transistor effect in 1948 and created a crystal triode with a point contact - the first semiconductor transistor (Nobel Prize, 1956). Researched together with J. Pearson a large number of samples of silicon with different contents of phosphorus and sulfur and considered the mechanism of scattering by donors and acceptors (1949). In 1950, W. Shockley introduced the concept of deformation potential. Independently of G. Fröhlich, he predicted (1950) the attraction between electrons due to the exchange of virtual photons and in 1951 he carried out calculations of the attraction between electrons due to the exchange of virtual phonons. In 1957, together with L. Cooper and J. Schrieffer, he built a microscopic theory of superconductivity (Bardeen - Cooper - Schrieffer theory) (Nobel Prize, 1972). He developed the theory of the Meissner effect on the basis of a model with an energy gap, and in 1958, independently of others, generalized the theory of the electromagnetic properties of superconductors to the case of fields of arbitrary frequency. In 1961 he proposed the effective Hamiltonian method (Bardeen tunneling model) in tunneling theory, and in 1962 he calculated the critical fields and currents for thin films.

In 1968 - 1969 he was president of the American Physical Society. F. London Medal (1962), National Medal for Science (1965), etc.

On June 30, 1948, Ralph Bone, deputy director of science at the Bell Telephone Laboratory, told reporters about the new invention: “We called it a transistor,” he even hesitated on this new word, “because it is a resistance (resistor - according to -English) from a semiconductor that amplifies the electrical signal." Compared to the bulky vacuum tubes of that time, the transistor performed the same functions with much less energy consumption and, in addition, had a much smaller size.

But the press paid virtually no attention to this small cylinder with protruding wires. None of the reporters invited to the press conference could imagine the extent of the future spread of this invention of the century.

The publisher of such a supermonster as the New York Times allocated a place for the message on the forty-sixth page of its publication in the “Radio News” section. Following the news that the weekly Radio Theater program would be replaced by Our Miss Brooks, it was reported that “a new device called the transistor, designed to replace vacuum tubes, was demonstrated yesterday at Bell Laboratory. This small half-inch metal cylinder contains no mesh, electrodes or glass canister. There is no need for a warm-up time for it.”

There was too much other news that morning for the birth of the transistor to be noticed. At the beginning of the week, Soviet troops refused to allow food transport into West Berlin. The US and UK responded with a stream of planes into the blocked city, dropping in thousands of tons of food and fuel needed to normal life more than two million Berliners. The Cold War began...

Even for the inventors themselves, the transistor was from the very beginning just a compact and economical replacement for vacuum tubes. In the post-war years, electronic digital computers occupied huge rooms and required a dozen specialists serving them to regularly replace burnt out lamps. Only the armed forces and the government could afford the expense of such giants.

But today we can say that without that amazing invention the world would never have come into being. Information Age. The small cylinder, which was invented half a century ago by Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley, completely changed the world around us. It's worth talking about how they did it.

The discovery of the transistor effect was demonstrated to the authorities six months earlier, on December 23, 1947. To be honest, the message was very short. Walter Brattain said a few introductory words and turned on the equipment. On the oscilloscope screen it was clearly visible how the supplied signal sharply increased at the output of the transistor. Brattain then read a few lines from the lab's test log, and the demonstration was over. There were two people present from Bell management: Deputy Director for Science Ralph Bone and laboratory expert Harvey Fletcher. No one can say what they thought, but, according to eyewitnesses, their faces were quite sour. Probably, like all normal bosses, Bone and Fletcher were waiting for stories about the economic impact and implementation. But nothing of the kind was said, and the discovery was probably the second most important after 70 years before, Alexander Bell called his assistant through the world’s first telephone: “Mr. Watson, I need you.”

William Shockley had begun dreaming of a solid-state amplifier a decade earlier, but he failed to achieve anything until the brilliant theorist John Bardeen came to Bell Labs in 1945. At first he sat in the same room with the no less brilliant experimenter Walter Brattain, who had been working on semiconductors since 1930. Being the complete opposite of each other in inclinations and temperament, they became friends over a common cause and frequent games of golf. It's them collaboration in Shockley's division and led to the discovery.

The first months after it, Shockley was literally torn by conflicting emotions. On the one hand, an outstanding discovery was made next to it, which was called “Bell Lab's best Christmas gift.” On the other hand, there was practically no contribution to the discovery, although he struggled with it for ten years.

But this contradiction greatly helped the transistor. Immediately after the discovery, Shockley filled page after page of his workbooks, connecting the new invention (the essence and significance of which he probably understood better than anyone) with his old developments. Bardeen and Brattain quickly lost interest in the purely technological exercises of their boss, and a certain coldness developed in their relationship by the end of the forties. In 1951, Bardeen left for a professorship at the University of Illinois, and Brattain deviated from the laboratory's flagship course and pursued independent research. The paths of the three discoverers crossed again in Stockholm, where they were awarded the Nobel Prize for 1956.

Only by the mid-fifties did physicists and engineers begin to realize the role and significance of the transistor, while the broad masses of the population remained completely unaware. Millions of radio and television receivers were still huge boxes filled with vacuum tubes. After turning them on, we had to wait a minute, or even more, before starting work, while the lamps warmed up. In 1954, a transistor still meant something expensive and sophisticated in a laboratory with very specific applications such as hearing aids and military communications. But this year everything changed: a small company from Dallas began producing transistors for portable radios that sold for fifty dollars. At the same time, a small and unknown Japanese company with the pleasant name Sony appeared on the transistor market, assessing their prospects better than the Americans.

In the late fifties, every decent American teenager owned a transistor radio. But the first transistor televisions were made by Sony, and the US monopoly began to melt away before it could develop.

Shockley, however, also did not waste time and in 1955 founded a semiconductor company in northern California, which became the beginning of the world famous “Silicon Valley”. We can say that Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley struck the first spark from which the great electronic information fire flared up - we are all basking in it today.

Half a century later, perhaps, as befits a great invention, the history of its creation is surrounded by legends. Recently it has received an unexpected development.

A small company, ACC, from the American state of New Jersey, announced that it is on the verge of creating an information storage device that has no equal on the planet. Its capacity is 90 gigabytes, and it is a thousand times faster in reading speed than the fastest hard drives IBM. Moreover, it is no larger in size than a large coin or casino token.

ACC President Jack Shulman calls the technology used to create the device “transcapasitor”. According to him, there is reason to believe that the information for its reproduction was extracted from the remains of a UFO that allegedly crashed in 1947 near the city of Roswell in New Mexico. The materials were given to Shulman by his acquaintances, former military men.

“At first I was extremely distrustful of his words and asked for evidence,” says Shulman. “Then he rolled up four carts with documents from a secret scientific laboratory of the Ministry of Defense. Experts confirmed that the documents date back to the mid-forties. Almost out of pure interest, we reproduced from the drawings a device resembling semiconductor device. It worked! We need 18-20 months to bring the sample to industrial production.” Shulman refuses all requests to show a sample to experts from large companies, citing the fact that the device has not yet been patented.

So - the “little green men” again? There is already a special page on the Internet computer network (www.accpc.com/roswell.html) dedicated to new technology. Information about Shulman’s work was published in the serious American publication “PC World Online” and the Russian publication “Computer World”. Moreover, the editor of the latter published an extensive commentary about another unexpected event - the appearance of the transistor.

After all, it was invented just when this very “something” happened in the American Roswell. There are hypotheses that it could have been “thrown” to us by unlucky aliens. The arguments of supporters of such thoughts are based on the fact that the transistor was presented to the public almost simultaneously with the first announcement in the press, reporting work in a completely new direction. There are rumors that at the site of the “death of the aliens,” the American military found fragments of silicon with exactly the same properties that the first transistor had. Moreover, in the USSR, despite high level development of science in it, nothing similar has been done...

The only thing that is very confusing: the article about the new drive and the editor’s thoughts about the transistor were published in the issue dated March 31, 1998. Although it’s not the first of April, it’s still very, very close...