When I was a kid, my father, Leo, who used to do things for himself and could build anything (I mixed the cement for the garage he built out of cement block, and helped him build a 14' outboard motorboat, 5 hp, out of a U-Mak-It kit, that we ran around in for years, after we finally figured a way to get it out of the basement where we built it) would repair the radio when a tube blew or a soldered connection broke. He'd heat up the soldering irons on the gas stove to unsolder the tube, replacing it with a new one, bought at the store where they sold radios, table model or floor model, the latter being the size of a small dresser. Then he'd solder the connection of the new tube to the chassis. The chassis was the aluminum base in which all the tubes sat. Over that you put the case, which is what you saw on your table. You'd know the radio stores because you'd see tubes lying around all over and in the store window, just as today you still know a shoe-repair shop by the heels and soles all over, including in the store window.
In 1947 William Shockley invented the transistor, a condensed version of one of the old radio tubes, and the tubes began to go the way of the buggy whip, which is before my time. I never saw a buggy whip, any more than you've probably seen a radio tube, unless you go back a ways.
In 1957, when I began serving on Staten Island, N.Y. beaches as a lifeguard, it was nice to bring a portable radio up on the chair to keep you company. It was about the size of a shoe-box, but thinner and taller, and it worked as long as the batteries held out. Some things don't change. It was a transistor radio, made in Japan, one of the first good products, in addition to the cameras, to come out of Japan after the war. The first wave of Japanese products was no good. I recall seeing a cap pistol of which the barrel was rolled tin, as in tin can tin (thin steel really) which came open. It still bore the Budweiser beer can label out of which the barrel had been shaped. Later Japan opened MITI, the Ministry for International Trade and Industry that refused to let anything out of Japan unless it was A-1 in design, manufacture and fit-and-finish. Nikon, Casio, Sony, Panasonic, Nissan, and Toyota are some of the results.
Jack Kirby, 81, whose death was reported in the LA Times on June 22, 2005, was an engineer whose invention of the integrated circuit (IC) in 1958 led to the digital revolution. I grew up in an analog world. Clock hands report time by analogy. When the big hand is here and the little hand is there, it must be something o'clock. That's the analogy. Today my wristwatch, good to 400' deep, supposedly, shows me numbers, called digits, which we also call fingers. We learned to count using fingers, remember. They call it a digital watch. No more analogies for us.
Kirby also invented the hand-held calculator. That was big, but the IC was bigger. No more radios the size of shoe-boxes. A few years later portable radios were the size of cigarette packs. A lot of people smoked in those days, but not lifeguards. We were swimmers, proud of our athletic ability. Smoking "cut down on your wind." If you liked to win underwater swimming competitions with your buddies, as I did, you didn't want to cut down on your wind. It's nice to be full of wind.
Kirby went to work for a little company in Texas making instruments. It was called Texas Instruments, in fact. Kirby's father ran a small company in rural western Kansas supplying electric power to customers. One day an ice storm took down the electric and power lines and Kirby's father worked with amateur radio operators (ham operators) to communicate with his customers. That helped Jack to become interested in electronics and study engineering, which he did as soon as the war ended. His first job was working with the newly invented transistors, invented by Shockley at AT&T. Kirby became interested in making them smaller, so lifeguards like me wouldn't have to lug such big portable radios, I guess. There may have been some rocketry interest as well, I'm not sure.
Texas Instruments offered Kirby a job trying to make smaller circuits. When I was a kid trying to figure out what to do with my life, I'd occasionally see a schematic diagram of electronic circuits in a book or in the plans for a radio or a TV set (my father built our first TV, a 17" Transvision (that was huge), from a kit, taking all winter, and doing a lot of soldering of wires threaded through insulation tubes called 'spaghetti,' because that's what they looked like). Damn thing actually worked. First thing we got was the women's roller derby, then the wrestling, then Steve Allen and Jack Paar. Oh, yes, and Mr. Tuesday Night, Milton Berle, and Ed Sullivan).
Engineers worked with circuits. I'd read about circuits but found the schematic diagrams beyond confusing. The electricity went around the wires in a circle, the electrons, or what was left of them, winding back around and through this resistor, capacitor, rheostat, or tube, all color coded but nevertheless confusing, until they made sound come out of a speaker or an image on a cathode ray tube. Engineers were people who could make sense of this. I was no engineer. Engineers were the kids who could build a high fidelity sound system that worked. You built one of those and you went to engineering school, where you got to look at more of those schematic diagrams that made my head spin.
Kirby invented the integrated circuit within a few weeks after arriving at Texas Instruments. "I was sitting at a desk, probably stayed there a little longer than usual," he said (I'm quoting from Terril Yue Jones's LATimes article). "Most of it formed pretty clearly during the course of that day. When I was finished, I had some drawings in a notebook, which I showed my supervisor when he returned. There was some slight skepticism, but basically (Texas Instruments) realized its importance."
Another newspaper showed a photo of the first integrated circuit model. It's the size of a shoebox. Now they etch millions of them onto a silicon wafer. Go down to the Museum of Innovation in San Jose and they show you the whole works. It's pretty amazing.
"He permanently changed the technology landscape and also the human condition," said Jack Harding, chief executive of the semiconductor maker eSilicon Corp. "While you might argue it was inevitable, it requires someone with an (unorthodox) view of the world to tie the pieces together and make it real."
They call the digital revolution a trillion dollar industry, probably because the value is incalculable and they need to call it something. Semiconductors are integrated circuits. Silicon Valley means integrated circuit. Your computer, the internet, and this blog are integrated circuit products.
All because a kid named Kirby had an unorthodox view of the world.
Waytago Kirby!
My three sons, Robbie, Ted, and Rick, are all graduates in Mechanical Engineering. No law for them. They're not put to sleep by schematic diagrams of electronic circuits. They work with the damn things. Good for them. Pass me a history book. Tell me where you draw the line between capitalism and socialism, states and the federal gummints, church and state, Darwin and Jesus, what you can say and what you can't. That keeps me awake. I'da been a lousy engineer. I'd be falling asleep all the time, over the schematic drawings.
Did I mention that there's a new Feynman book out? Richard P. Feynman. His letters. Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track. That's what it's called. (2005) Now there's someone with an unorthodox view of the world, which is either out of step or he is. I'm betting on Feynman as opposed to the rest of the world. I couldn't put it down, and have passed it on to Robbie, who will no doubt pass it on to Ted and Rick.
Feynman tried to describe Nature, that's all.
That's not so easy, when you get below the boulder, pebble, sand, and atom level. Or above the planet, star, and galaxy level.
Do you know where the word galaxy comes from? You know our term "Milky Way?" The root of galaxy is the Greek for milk, galax or galact. Our galaxy is the Milky Way.
Greek is our ever fruitful word basket, from which we borrow at will, whenever we need a word that sounds more elegant than plain English. Which sounds more mundane, Milky Way or Galaxy? When's the last time you looked up and saw the Milky Way, our Home Sweet Home? A while, I bet.
Feynman has a great line, which is probably why CBS refused to air the interview, drawing cries of censorship (see this does have to do with Con Law) about the role of God in the Universe. Feynman didn't buy the idea of this big God, out there, who descends to Earth to help people, down here.
Was there a God of this whole big universe? Feynman had an appreciation of its dimension, or at least of how vast it was. Today we know that it is really half-vast.
Feynman said,
"The stage is too large for the drama."