Computers &
​Electrical Engineering

Company’s Ambitions

Electrical Engineering and computers pre 1950’s were not as developed or advancing fast. Companies like AT&T wanted faster computers to send signals across the continent and to others in order for a better and more connected service and be the first to do it. This was a way to battle the competition and be the company on top which would further there power and allow the company to have more economic growth and better the economy but there was a problem.

The Problem

There was a technological barrier that electrical engineers had hard time figuring out. How to make computers smaller and more powerful? In the early 1900’s computers where as large as a room. Causing this massive size was the big and short lived vaccum tubes. These vaccum tubes were large, transported minimal signals, and data drastically less data then your average smart phone and were overall unreliable. This is when AT&T hired Bell Telephone Labs to try to figure out how to do this. They needed to find out if they could create a semiconductor device that could replace the vacuum tubes.

How would they make a such a device? This video explains how the device would have to work.