Add Little Brain Cell post

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blog/index.rst

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 .. toctree::
    :maxdepth: 1
 
+   littlebraincell
    picam
    asm

blog/littlebraincell.rst

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+.. _littlebraincell:
+
+Transistor first reported as "Little Brain Cell"
+================================================
+
+*2023 Nov 28*
+
+.. _interview: https://www.latent.space/p/semianalysis
+
+.. _Chip War: https://www.christophermiller.net/semiconductors-1
+
+Last week I listened to the Latent Space `interview`_ with "That
+SemiAnalysis Guy". His name is Dylan Patel but I'm going to keep calling him
+That SemiAnalysis Guy because it tickles my brain for some reason.
+The interview was great! It motivated me to finally learn more about the
+hardware industry. At the end of the interview That SemiAnalysis Guy
+recommends `Chip War`_ by Chris Miller, who will hereby be called "That Chip War
+Guy". The book was on my radar but I never got around to reading it because I
+was pretty turned off by the clickbaity title. I'm only 50 pages in but it
+seems like the book is just a well-researched history of the semiconductor
+industry...?
+
+I love it when historians mention their primary sources. That Chip War Guy
+mentions some of the earliest reporting on the transistor, back in 1948:
+
+    When Bell Labs held a press conference in June 1948 to announce that
+    its scientists had invented the transistor, it wasn't easy to
+    understand why these wired blocks of germanium merited a special
+    announcement. The New York Times buried the story on page 46. Time
+    magazine did better, reporting the invention under the headline
+    "Little Brain Cell."
+
+.. _full text: https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,804759,00.html
+
+I dug around a little bit and found the `full text`_. It's pretty short so I'll
+save you a click and reproduce it here in full:
+
+    Vacuum tubes are the brain cells of modern technology. Each year, as
+    machines take on more complex jobs, more & more vacuum tubes are needed.
+    But they are tricky to manufacture: they are usually both bulky and
+    fragile. They have to warm up before they can start operating, and they
+    need a continuous current to keep their filaments hot. The men who
+    design electronic nervous systems would like a vacuum tube without these
+    faults.
+
+    Last week Bell Telephone Laboratories demonstrated a small, simple
+    device that can do many of the jobs now done by vacuum tubes. Called a
+    "Transistor," it has no vacuum, no glass envelope. It requires no
+    heating current and can start working immediately without a warmup.
+
+    The Transistor is a slim metal cylinder about an inch long. Inside are
+    two hair-thin wires whose points press, two-thousandths of an inch
+    apart, on a pinhead of germanium. A feeble current in the "input" wire
+    controls a much larger current flowing from the "output" wire. Such
+    "amplification" is the essential property of vacuum tubes. The
+    Transistor works on a different principle (by changing the conductivity
+    of the germanium), but it amplifies the input current as much as 100
+    times.
+
+    Transistors are not in production yet, but Bell scientists, to show what
+    their little brain cells can do, demonstrated a radio receiver with
+    vacuum tubes replaced by Transistors. Though not very powerful, it
+    worked fine. Probably the Transistor's first practical assignment will
+    be to amplify currents in telephone circuits, a job now done by vacuum
+    tubes.
+
+.. _git-go: https://www.deseret.com/1996/11/24/19278907/from-the-get-go-phrase-came-from-american-blacks
+
+It's fascinating to me that we were thinking of this stuff as "electronic
+nervous systems" and "little brain cells" from the `git-go`_.
+
+(I just looked up the etymology of "get-go" and found that original "git-go"
+spelling. Someone in the git community should totally create some kind of git
+tool in Go and call it git-go.)
+
+.. _scan: https://time.com/vault/issue/1948-07-12/page/56/
+
+I was also able to find a `scan`_ of the magazine. The web is a vast treasure
+trove of historical content.
+
+.. image:: littlebraincell.png
+
+P.S. I also learned from That Chip War Guy that vacuum-tube-powered missiles
+and bombs were comically inaccurate. "Comical" isn't the right word because
+we're talking about war, but you get the idea. A post for another day, perhaps.

rss.xml

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 	<pubDate>Sat, 25 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
 	<atom:link href="https://www.biodigitaljazz.net/rss.xml" rel="self"
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+        <item>
+            <title>Transistor first reported as "Little Brain Cell"</title>
+	    <link>https://www.biodigitaljazz.net/blog/littlebraincell.html</link>
+	    <description>
+                Time magazine's first report on the transistor, back in 1948.
+            </description>
+	    <pubDate>Tues, 28 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
+	    <guid>https://www.biodigitaljazz.net/blog/littlebraincell.html</guid>
+        </item>
         <item>
             <title>The eleventh circle of hell: setting up an RPi camera module</title>
 	    <link>https://www.biodigitaljazz.net/blog/picam.html</link>