Thank Gates It's Thursday

This is not about Billy the Billionaire but about gates that allow electrons to flow. It is the sixtieth anniversary of the invention of the first transistor. A transistor is a gate that allows electrons to flow or can stop electrons from flowing depending whether the gate is open or closed.

The boys at Bell Labs came up with the transistor in 1947. This solid state device replaced the vacuum tube old Tommy Edison had invented back in the 19th century.

Eighteen years after the first working transistor Gordon Moore wrote a paper that became Moore's Law in which he postulated that going forward from 1965 every two years manufacturers of solid state integrated circuits would be able to double the number of transistors in their devices. This has held true for the past 42 years and now we have memory and logic chips with over five hundred million transistors in each chip.

With all these transistors on a single device the big hurdle to overcome is the dissipation of the heat generated within the circuit and therefore Thermo is again the subject of much research.

Intel intends to produce a tri-gate or three dimensional based chip that will use less energy and therefore dissipate less heat. Intel is claiming they can obey Moore's Law for at least another decade.

I am happy to report American motorists are getting smarter and the Smart car should sell well when it is introduced to the USA next year.

Everything is slimming down in the USA. We are now eating smaller plates of food. Glad to see bottled water is non longer on the top twenty hot items.

Talking about smarts a five year chimp had better short term memory that a team of college kids in Japan. Perhaps we should all have a Chimp as a pet so we can find our keys to our smart car.

All this touching of screens reminds me of the new technology termed "energy harvesting." Light switch that are wireless that get to emit a radio frequency signal by merely pressing on the switch are coming to market. Theses switches do not need batteries and are not wired into the wall. Just the pressure of touching them charges them to send a radio signal to the light in a room to turn on or off. A new 57 story skyscraper in Madrid spain will be equipped with the energy harvesting light switches. This will allow walls to be moved without have to deal with relocating wiring.

The word of the day is deracinate or to uproot. We will soon deracinate the humble light switch.

deracinate \dee-RAS-uh-nayt\, transitive verb:
1. To pluck up by the roots; to uproot.
2. To displace from one's native or accustomed environment.

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