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Crystal Fire Audiobook by Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson
Please open https://hotaudiobook.com ONLY on your standard browser Safari, Chrome, Microsoft or Firefox to download full audiobooks of your choice for free.
Title: Crystal Fire
Subtitle: The Birth of the Information Age
Author: Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson
Narrator: Dennis McKee
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
Language: English
Release date: 11-17-00
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 130 votes
Genres: Science & Technology, Technology
Publisher's Summary:
On December 16, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, physicists at Bell Laboratories, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of germanium half an inch long. The electrical power coming out of that piece of germanium was 100 times stronger than what went in. In that moment the transistor was invented and the Information Age began. Crystal Fire recounts the story of the transistor team at Bell Labs headed up by William Shockley, who shared the Nobel Prize with Bardeen and Brattain. While his colleagues went on to other research, Shockley grew increasingly obsessed with the new gadget. Eventually he formed his own firm, the first semiconductor company in what would become Silicon Valley. Above all, Crystal Fire is a tale of the human factors in technology; the pride and jealousies coupled with scientific and economic aspiration that led to the creation of modern microelectronics and ignited the greatest technological explosion in history.
Members Reviews:
Interesting and not light on the science either!
This book is very interesting for anyone inclined to science. You dont have to by a physicist or mathemetician to appreciate it, yet it covered the actual science behind it as well.
Not only is it a good history book, but a good primer in understanding semi conductor mechanisms as because its historical, it also explains the discoveries in depth layer by layer.
After this book you will know the history, but also have a much better understanding of semi conductor physics.
Better listen to the voice
This is a fascinating though technical story. Unfortunately, it is read by monotoned, plodding individual. I suggest listening to a sample of this guy because he makes a great story extremely tedious. It is probably better to read this material rather than to suffer the narator which is too bad. It really will interest a 45-55 computer or electrical engineer.
A very good book on the history of technology
This book pulled out of the dustbin a critical piece of technological history that ultimately changed all of our lives in the IIH of the 20th century. The transistor. Not a physicist or scientist myself, I did find some passages to be heavy-going, realizing that I was not comprehending 100% of the technical information being imparted. But that seemed a small price to pay to find out the story itself, the personalities, the business aspects, and at least some % of the technical aspects. The reader is not the best ... a bit too much monotone for my taste. But OK.
Phenomenal Transistor Trip
Yes it has to be played in double speed but the time spent listening to this book was rewarding and enlightening.
For those studying electronics this is a must listen
When NJ didn't suck
Well researched and comprehensive history of the invention and development of the modern transistor which led to the creation of the semiconductor industry and the computer age. Focus is on the unique environment at Bell Labs immediately before, during, and after WWII, which supported and fostered both pure and applied research. The book paints a balanced, but largely unflattering, picture of William Shockley - one of the three Bell Labs scientists who won the Noble Prize in physics for the invention of the transistor. John Bardeen, who shared the prize, and later won another for his work on superconductivity at the University of Illinois, comes off much better.
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Title: Crystal Fire
Subtitle: The Birth of the Information Age
Author: Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson
Narrator: Dennis McKee
Format: Unabridged
Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
Language: English
Release date: 11-17-00
Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.
Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 130 votes
Genres: Science & Technology, Technology
Publisher's Summary:
On December 16, 1947, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain, physicists at Bell Laboratories, jabbed two electrodes into a sliver of germanium half an inch long. The electrical power coming out of that piece of germanium was 100 times stronger than what went in. In that moment the transistor was invented and the Information Age began. Crystal Fire recounts the story of the transistor team at Bell Labs headed up by William Shockley, who shared the Nobel Prize with Bardeen and Brattain. While his colleagues went on to other research, Shockley grew increasingly obsessed with the new gadget. Eventually he formed his own firm, the first semiconductor company in what would become Silicon Valley. Above all, Crystal Fire is a tale of the human factors in technology; the pride and jealousies coupled with scientific and economic aspiration that led to the creation of modern microelectronics and ignited the greatest technological explosion in history.
Members Reviews:
Interesting and not light on the science either!
This book is very interesting for anyone inclined to science. You dont have to by a physicist or mathemetician to appreciate it, yet it covered the actual science behind it as well.
Not only is it a good history book, but a good primer in understanding semi conductor mechanisms as because its historical, it also explains the discoveries in depth layer by layer.
After this book you will know the history, but also have a much better understanding of semi conductor physics.
Better listen to the voice
This is a fascinating though technical story. Unfortunately, it is read by monotoned, plodding individual. I suggest listening to a sample of this guy because he makes a great story extremely tedious. It is probably better to read this material rather than to suffer the narator which is too bad. It really will interest a 45-55 computer or electrical engineer.
A very good book on the history of technology
This book pulled out of the dustbin a critical piece of technological history that ultimately changed all of our lives in the IIH of the 20th century. The transistor. Not a physicist or scientist myself, I did find some passages to be heavy-going, realizing that I was not comprehending 100% of the technical information being imparted. But that seemed a small price to pay to find out the story itself, the personalities, the business aspects, and at least some % of the technical aspects. The reader is not the best ... a bit too much monotone for my taste. But OK.
Phenomenal Transistor Trip
Yes it has to be played in double speed but the time spent listening to this book was rewarding and enlightening.
For those studying electronics this is a must listen
When NJ didn't suck
Well researched and comprehensive history of the invention and development of the modern transistor which led to the creation of the semiconductor industry and the computer age. Focus is on the unique environment at Bell Labs immediately before, during, and after WWII, which supported and fostered both pure and applied research. The book paints a balanced, but largely unflattering, picture of William Shockley - one of the three Bell Labs scientists who won the Noble Prize in physics for the invention of the transistor. John Bardeen, who shared the prize, and later won another for his work on superconductivity at the University of Illinois, comes off much better.