IEEE

From 17 November to 23 December 1947, Walter H. Brattain and John A. Bardeen -- under the direction of William B. Shockley -- discovered the principle of the transistor and developed and demonstrated a point-contact germanium transistor.

This was beginning of solid state electronics which quickly reduced the size and power requirements of existing electronic tube-based electronic devices. The innovation revolutionized the electronics field and eventually ushered in the information age via small, low power electronic devices and eventually low cost integrated circuits.

The transistor has been cited as the most important invention of the 20th Century. It’s hard to imagine any field of human endeavor where it has not had a profound positive impact from communications, computing, transportation, medical, etc.

The invention of the first working transistor set the stage for all subsequent solid-state device developments. Although Julius Edgar Lilienfeld successfully patented a number of field-effect transistor configurations starting in 1925 and into the 1930’s, there is no indication that he ever produced any working models. If he did, they would not have worked very well due to the state of germanium and silicon crystal growth at that time. By 1947, advances in germanium semiconductors made it possible for Bardeen and Brattain to make the first working point contact transistor.

Tags

Transistor

solid state electronics

germanium

silicon crystal

Image Credit

National Archives

Image Caption

In 1997 Lucent Technologies created this replica to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the invention of the point-contact transistor at Bell Labs in December 1947.

First Wireless Radio Broadcast by Reginald A. Fessenden

Taiyuan Pai — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:53:54 +0000

First Wireless Radio Broadcast by Reginald A. Fessenden

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 11:53

Society

Main Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

42.081471, -70.640291

Address1

Blackman's Point

Address2

2 Central Street

City

Brant Rock

State

Country

USA

Zip

02050

Website

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:First_Wireless_Radio_Broadcast…

Creator

Reginald A. Fessenden

On 24 December 1906, the first radio broadcast for entertainment and music was transmitted from Brant Rock, Massachusetts to the general public. This pioneering broadcast was achieved after years of development work by Reginald Aubrey Fessenden (1866-1932) who built a complete system of wireless transmission and reception using amplitude modulation (AM) of continuous electromagnetic waves. This technology was a revolutionary departure from transmission of dots and dashes widespread at the time.

Three days before Christmas Eve, Reginald Fessenden planned to give two radio broadcasts, on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. Station staff notifies the ships of the US Navy and of the United Fruit Company to listen. These ships had previously been fitted with radio receivers.

The historical site is located at Blackman’s Point, Brant Rock, in the County of Plymouth Massachusetts. Blackman’s Point is a few miles from the center of Marshfield. The Town of Marshfield is approximately 30 miles south-east of Boston. The remaining concrete foundation built to support Fessenden’s wireless tower, is in a trailer park owned by the Blackman family at the south end of the town of Brant Rock, off of Central St.

Tags

Image Credit

Courtesy Michael Thompson (CC BY-SA 2.5)

Image Caption

500 CPS Synchronous Rotary Gap transmitter at Brant Rock, Ma. Ca: 1906.

First Wearable Cardiac Pacemaker

Taiyuan Pai — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:35:21 +0000

First Wearable Cardiac Pacemaker

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 11:35

Society

Main Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

43.660421, -79.389335

Address1

C. H. Best Institute

Address2

112 College St

City

Toronto

State

Country

USA

Website

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:First_Wearable_Cardiac_Pacemak…

Creator

Bakken, Earl E.

During the winter of 1957-58, Earl E. Bakken developed the first wearable transistorized pacemaker, the request of heart surgeon, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei. As earlier pacemakers were AC-powered, this battery-powered device liberated patients from their power-cord tethers. The wearable pacemaker was a significant step in the evolution to fully-implantable units.

The external transistorized pacemaker was an important step in the transition from desk-top to fully-implantable units. Previous to 1957, cardiac pacemakers were bulky, vacuum-tube units operated by AC power. Patient mobility was greatly restricted, and power failures could be disastrous. Late in 1957, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, a leading pioneer in open-heart surgery at the University of Minnesota, asked Earl E. Bakken, co-founder of Medtronic, Inc., to develop a battery-operated pacemaker. Bakken produced a prototype about 4 weeks later that Lillehei almost immediately used for treating children who had developed heart block after surgery .This wearable, transistorized unit was produced commercially as the Medtronic 5800 pacemaker and liberated hundreds of patients from their power-cord tethers, demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of long-term pacing.

Tags

University of Minnesota

Image Credit

Courtesy Professor Marko Turina, University Hospital, Zurich (CC BY 3.0)

Image Caption

Arne H. W. Larsson (26th May 1915 to 28th December 2001) was the first recipient of an implantable pacemaker. He received the first device in 1958 and had a total of 26 devices during his life. He became an advocate for patients needing pacemakers, campaigning for greater funding and research in this area.

First Transpacific Reception of a Television (TV) Signal via Satellite

Taiyuan Pai — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 15:10:28 +0000

First Transpacific Reception of a Television (TV) Signal via Satellite

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 11:10

Society

Main Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

36.34389, 140.454254

Address1

Ibaraki Satellite Communication Center

Address2

650, Ishitaki, Ibaraki

City

Takahagi

Country

Japan

Zip

318-0022

Website

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:First_Transpacific_Reception_o…

On 23 November 1963, this site received the first transpacific transmission of a TV signal from Mojave earth station in California, U.S.A., via the Relay 1 communications satellite. The Ibaraki earth station used a 20m Cassegrain antenna, the first use of this type of antenna for commercial telecommunications. This event demonstrated the capability and impact of satellite communications and helped open a new era of intercontinental live TV programming relayed via satellite.

Tags

Image Caption

Artist's vision of NASA Relay 1 satellite

First Transatlantic Reception of a Television Signal via Satellite

Taiyuan Pai — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:42:11 +0000

First Transatlantic Reception of a Television Signal via Satellite

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 10:42

Society

Main Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

48.786962, -3.523922

Address1

Parc du Radôme

Address2

22560 Pleumeur-Bodou

City

Pleumeur-Bodou

Country

France

Website

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:First_Transatlantic_Reception_…

On 11 July 1962 a station in Pimsleur-Bodou received the first transatlantic transmission of a TV signal from a twin station in Andover, Maine, USA via the TELSTAR satellite. The success of TELSTAR and the earth stations, the first built for active satellite communications, illustrated the potential of a future world-wide satellite system to provide communications between continents.

Research into ways of improving the quality and quantity of intercontinental telephone lines has been an ongoing focus for a number of years. One of the first underwater telephone cables, laid between France and the United States in 1956, provided an extremely limited capacity of only 36 channels. The transmission of televised programming was non-existent. Programs were recorded manually on a magnetic tape, and ten dispatched by airplane courier to its destination studio, where is would be "replayed" in order to disseminate its contents to spectators.

In April 1961 a multi-national agreements was signed between the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), Bell Telephone Laboratories (Bell Labs), NASA, the British Post Office, and the French National PPT (Post Office.) This agreement established a joint collaboration for the project development of two active, mobile telecommunications satellites, "TELSTAR" and "Relay."

The first Radome was only temporary, and was installed in order to house the construction site for the antenna. Both this temporary shelter and the final Radome measured 64 meters in diameter. The final Radome, installed in France in the summer of 1962, is now a museum. It is made of Hypalon coated Dacron and weighs over 30 tons.

TELSTAR I was launched from Cape Canaveral (now the Kennedy Space Center) on 10 July 1962. TELSTAR I was placed in an elliptical orbit (completed once every 2 hours and 37 minutes), rotating at a 45 degree angle above the Earth's equator. The maximum transmission time between Europe and the United States was 20 minutes per pass. On 11 July 1962 the TELSTAR Satellite transmission was received in Pleumeur-Bodou, enabling the world's first satellite transmission of a short television program from the United States.

Tags

Image Credit

Courtesy Flickr/Nicholas Lannuzel (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Image Caption

The Radome in Pimsleur-Bodou.

First Television Broadcast in Western Canada

Taiyuan Pai — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:26:20 +0000

First Television Broadcast in Western Canada

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 10:26

Society

Main Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

49.3627, -122.951052

Address1

CBC Broadcasting Site, Mount Seymour

Address2

1700 Mount Seymour Road

City

North Vancouver

State

Country

Canada

Zip

V7G 1L3

Website

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:First_Television_Broadcast_in_…

Creator

Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

On 16 December 1953, the first television broadcast in Western Canada was transmitted from this site by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's CBUT Channel 2. The engineering experience gained here was instrumental in the subsequent establishment of the more than one thousand public and private television broadcasting sites that serve Western Canada today.

The CBUT broadcasting site on Mount Seymour (North Vancouver, British Columbia) was both the first television broadcasting site in Western Canada and the first high elevation/mountain top broadcasting site in Canada. The opening broadcast featured special launch ceremonies at 6 pm and was followed by a CBC newscast at 7 pm. (Western Canada refers to the four provinces west of the Great Lakes: British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. It is physically separated from Central Canada (Ontario and Quebec) by the Great Lakes and the relatively inhospitable Canadian Shield.)

At the time of the first broadcast, the establishment of a television station in Vancouver was seen as an important contribution to Canadian sovereignty and cultural identity. The first broadcast and associated ceremonies were major events. At the same time, CBUT provided an important training ground for and contributed to the principles and practices that guided the engineers who went on to deploy the over 1000 public and private broadcasting sites that serve Western Canada today.

Although VHF transmitting sites had already been established in Western Canada for FM broadcasting, these sites were generally located atop tall buildings in urban areas, e.g., VE9FG (later CBU-FM), a 1-kW FM broadcast station that became operational on 21 November 1947 and which was located at the Hotel Vancouver in downtown Vancouver.

The three television broadcasting sites that had been established in Canada previously (in Montreal, Toronto and Ottawa) were also installed at relatively low elevations. For the CBC managers of the day, establishing the network’s fourth television transmitter so far West and at a high elevation and a remote location was a bold and significant decision.

The relatively complicated topography of the Lower Mainland of British Columbia required that considerable care be taken to choose a broadcasting site that would provide the best coverage. Predicting and evaluating the coverage of a VHF broadcast transmitter in mountainous terrain is much different from the corresponding task for the MF broadcast transmitters that had been installed at various low-level locations throughout the Lower Mainland during the 1930‘s and 1940‘s.

Tags

First Semiconductor Integrated Circuit (IC)

Taiyuan Pai — Mon, 20 Aug 2012 14:10:05 +0000

First Semiconductor Integrated Circuit (IC)

Mon, 08/20/2012 - 10:10

Society

Main Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

32.9303, -96.754364

Address1

Texas Instruments, North Campus

Address2

13532 North Central Expressway

City

Dallas

State

Country

USA

Zip

75243

Website

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:First_Semiconductor_Integrated…

Creator

Kilby, Jack S.

On 12 September 1958, Jack S. Kilby demonstrated the first working integrated circuit to managers at Texas Instruments. This was the first time electronic components were integrated onto a single substrate. This seminal device consisted of a phase shift oscillator circuit on a tiny bar of germanium measuring 7/16” by 1/16” (11.1 mm by 1.6 mm). Today, integrated circuits are the fundamental building blocks of virtually all electronic equipment.

The integrated circuit is the invention that enabled the modern electronics industry. Originally used in military applications, it quickly became the core of commercial and consumer electronics, and moved into medical equipment, household appliances, automobiles and even musical greeting cards. It is estimated that the average person encounters thousands of integrated circuits every day. Because of this invention, the electronics industry has grown from $29 billion in 1961 to $1500 billion today.

This invention set in motion the technology that would enable the second industrial revolution, and its in-situ form made it possible for future generations of integrated circuits to become orders of magnitude smaller and more powerful. Today, the integrated circuit is the fundamental building block of all electronic equipment. The integrated circuit was the answer to a difficult technological problem known as the “tyranny of numbers.” At the time, the recently invented transistor was inspiring engineers to design evermore complex electronic circuits and equipment containing hundreds or thousands of discrete components such as transistors, diodes, rectifiers and capacitors. But the problem was that these components still had to be interconnected to form electronic circuits, and hand-soldering thousands of components to thousands of bits of wire was expensive and time-consuming. It was also unreliable; every soldered joint was a potential source of trouble. The challenge was to find cost-effective, reliable ways of interconnecting these components and producing them. It wasn’t until the invention of the integrated circuit by Jack Kilby that this could be done and electronic equipment could start its dramatic course of commercialization and miniaturization. In 1976, Kilby provided insight into his thinking by explaining, “Further thought led me to the conclusion that semiconductors were all that were really required — that resistors and capacitors [passive devices], in particular, could be made from the same material as the active devices [transistors]. I also realized that, since all of the components could be made of a single material, they could also be made in situ interconnected to form a complete circuit." The invention caused a lot of buzz and controversy in the first few years as it was shown at trade shows. Recognizing the need for a "demonstration product" to speed widespread use of the integrated circuit, TI management challenged Kilby to design a calculator as powerful as the large, electro-mechanical desktop models of the day, but small enough to fit in a coat pocket. The resulting electronic hand-held calculator, of which Kilby is a co-inventor, successfully commercialized the integrated circuit.

Tags

Image Credit

Courtesy Wikipedia/Texas Instruments

Image Caption

Jack Kilby's original integrated circuit.

First Real-Time Speech Communication on Packet Networks

Taiyuan Pai — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 19:44:40 +0000

First Real-Time Speech Communication on Packet Networks Wed, 08/15/2012 - 15:44

Society

Main Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

42.355499, -71.278152

Address1

Lincoln Laboratory

Address2

244 Wood Street

City

Lexington

State

Country

USA

Zip

02493

Website

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:First_Real-Time_Speech_Communi…

In August 1974, the first real-time speech communication over a packet-switched network was demonstrated via ARPANET between MIT Lincoln Laboratory and USC Information Sciences Institute. By 1982, these technologies enabled Internet packet speech and conferencing linking terrestrial, packet radio, and satellite networks. This work in real-time network protocols and speech coding laid the foundation for voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) communications and related applications including Internet videoconferencing. This pioneering work on speech in packet networks developed and demonstrated systems which were forerunners of the voice-over internet protocol (VoIP) systems that are now so widely in use. The real-time voice work included development of a new Network Voice Protocol (NVP), because the packet and reliability constraints of the available Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) implementation made it unsuitable for real-time communication. This protocol development was an immediate forerunner of the separation of TCP and IP, so that the real-time packet speech work played a large role in the development of the protocols, which are still in wide use today. The technology and protocols for real-time speech over packet networks also enabled other real-time internet applications such as packet video, so that now systems like Skype enable real-time voice and video at home and in offices for extremely large number of people. This work combined major developments in multiple areas, including the first real-time implementations of narrowband LPC speech coding on digital signal processors, network protocols to enable real-time packet delivery, strategies for reconstituting speech, techniques for reconstitution of speech from packets arriving at non-uniform intervals, packet speech conferencing techniques, and interoperation over different types of packet networks (landline, Ethernet, satellite, radio). Another feature was the outstanding collaboration among organizations and across technology areas. Finally, the long-term impact is a major feature which sets this work apart, as evidenced by the wide use of VoIP and related application such as packet video.

Tags

First Radio Astronomical Observations Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry

Taiyuan Pai — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 18:40:07 +0000

First Radio Astronomical Observations Using Very Long Baseline Interferometry

Wed, 08/15/2012 - 14:40

Society

Main Category

Era

Date Created

Location Country

Coordinates

49.373599, -119.61975

Address1

Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory

Address2

717 White Lake Road

City

Caleden

State

Country

Canada

Zip

V0H 1K0

Website

http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Milestones:First_Radio_Astronomical_Obser…

On the morning of 17 April 1967, radio astronomers used this radiotelescope at DRAO and a second one at the Algonquin Radio Observatory located 3074 km away to make the first successful radio astronomical observations using Very Long Baseline Interferometry. Today, VLBI networks span the globe, extend into space and continue to make significant contributions to both radio astronomy and geodesy.

The DRAO 26-m radiotelescope was completed in 1959 and the Algonquin 43-m radiotelescope in Ontario was completed in 1966. As a result, Canada had two major radiotelescope installations in 1967. Although the Algonquin radiotelescope ceased radio astronomy operations in 1988, DRAO is still very active today.

Discussions of the feasibility of interferometry spanning the continent, i.e., Very Long Baseline Interferometry or VLBI, began in 1960, and technical developments continued at various sites around the world until success was achieved in Canada in 1967. From its Canadian beginnings, VLBI has become an important technique for both radio astronomy and geodesy. It has been the central theme of over 3,500 papers in the scientific literature over the ten-year period 1999 to 2008, and the flow continues unabated.

The significance of VLBI was recognized almost immediately. In 1971, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences awarded the Rumford Prize to the members of three pioneering VLBI research groups, including the team from Canada that made the historic first observations and teams from: (1) MIT and (2) NRAO (National Radio Astronomy Observatory) and Cornell University that conducted important follow on work.

In the late 1970s the community of Canadian VLBI scientists proposed the next step: deployment of an array of large radio telescopes across the entire breadth of Canada which they referred to as the Canadian Long Baseline Array. Using VLBI techniques, the array would function as one giant imaging telescope. The project fell victim to a barren funding climate for science in Canada in the 1980s but the concept was used by US scientists to build the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) across that country. The VLBA has been a scientific success story since its completion in 1993.

Canadian researchers pursued VLBI research with the DRAO 26-m radiotelescope until 1988. In 1990 DRAO scientists and engineers became involved with the first extension of VLBI techniques into Earth orbit. The DRAO team designed and built a forefront correlator, a special-purpose digital processor that combined signals from a Japanese space telescope, VSOP, with ground based radiotelescopes around the world. VSOP was launched in 1997 and operated with superb effectiveness until 2003. In the process, it achieved many world firsts.

VLBI provides better angular resolution than any optical telescope and can reveal details within some of the most distant objects detectable. Astronomers use VLBI to provide crucial tests of General Relativity, to demonstrate definitively the existence of black holes in galaxy cores, to test the fundamentals of high energy physics, and to look back to the early Universe.

VLBI techniques also permits the position of objects on Earth and in the solar system to be measured with millimetre accuracy with respect to the ICRF (International Celestial Reference Frame) defined by distant quasars. On 13 August 2009, the XXVII IAU (International Astronomical Union) General Assembly adopted the second-generation ICRF2 as the fundamental celestial reference frame as of 1 January 2010. A complete description of ICRF2 is available in IERS (International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service) Technical Note 35. VLBI techniques are now routinely used: (1) to provide the basis for all terrestrial precision surveying, including the Global Positioning System, (2) to precisely track spacecraft on voyages to the planets, and (3) to make important measurements of the movement of crustal plates and to help predict earthquakes.

Short-baseline interferometry had been used in radio astronomy for high-resolution imaging since the 1940’s. Cables or (sometimes) radio links were used to connect two or more radio antennas to signal processing equipment. The distance or baseline between pairs of antennas in such interferometers was initially small but gradually became larger over time. It soon became clear that important astrophysical questions could be answered only by building interferometers with baselines greater than any cable or radio link could span.

The principal technical challenge of the first VLBI observations was to establish two independent receiver systems with individual clocks and recording devices that were sufficiently stable to maintain coherence over periods of many minutes and sufficiently sensitive to detect the very weak radio astronomical signals.

Scientists from across Canada worked together and applied great ingenuity to achieve a difficult goal within a limited budget. For example, the first VLBI observations were collected using surplus video recorders that had been purchased from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Tags

Radio

Radiotelescope

Very Long Baseline Interferometry

Astronomy

Geodesy

Image Credit

Courtesy Flickr/bulliver (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Image Caption

The Radiotelescope at DRAO