VALILA, MARY GRACE CATHERINE I.

BS ECE 3B

HISTORY OF ELECTRONICS

600 BCE

Thales of Miletus discovered static electricity by rubbing fur on substances such as amber

1800

Alessando Volta created the very first battery

1820

Andre Marie Ampere produced a definition of the unit of measurement of current flow, now known as the ampere.

1827

Georg Simon Ohm discovers the mathematical law of electric-current called "Ohm's Law". He used thermopiles as his voltage source to get a very low resistance.

1828

Joseph Henry invents electromagnet and publishes papers 1831- He sought no patents on any of his inventions, believing personal profit to be incompatible with the dignity of science. Henry used wire that he insulated by winding silk or cotton tightly coiled on an iron core, much more efficient than Sturgeon's loose wire electromagnet.

1831

Michael Faraday generates electricity using a magnet and coil of wire

1870

Heinrich Hertz Discovered the existence of radio waves that his calculations became

accepted. He supplied an electric charge to a capacitor and inductor, and then short-

circuited the capacitor through a spark gap.Charges surging back and forth, created an oscillating electric discharge.Some of the energy of this oscillation was radiated from the spark gap in theform of electromagnetic

waves at radio frequencies. (OSCILLATION – something moving back and forth)

1899

JJ Thompson of Cambridge University in England discovered electron

1904

John Ambrose Fleming Observed that current would only flow in one direction in such a device. Since this device consisted of an anode and a cathode it was called a diode

and used as a radio detector.

1906

Lee De Forest mounted athird element, the grid, between the filament and cathode of a vacuum tube.

He called an audion but which is now called a triode(three-element tube). It was first used only as a detector, but its potentialities as an amplifier

andoscillator were soon developed.

1912

Greenleaf Whittier Pickard Discovered the rectifying properties of crystals. (Crystal Detector -one of the

first devices widely used for receiving radio broadcasts) Also one of the first scientists to demonstrate the wireless electromagnetic

transmission of speech.

Improvements in electronics continued through the 30’s and was especially rapid during World War II.

The development of the cavity magnetron was a very significant event that greatly improved the capabilities of the Allies to detect enemy ships and planes.

Airborne radar even provided a means for bombing without actually seeing the target.

1920

Commercial radio was born

1923

Television is invented

1943.

The beginnings of electronic countermeasures can also be traced back to this period including the use of ‘window’ to hinder radar detection

Another significant aspect was the decoding of enemy radio transmissions which was one of the factors that greatly speeded up the development of the computer.

1944

Howard H. Aiken, a Harvard engineer working with IBM, succeeded introducing an all-electronic calculator. The purpose of this machine was to create ballistic charts for the U.S. Navy.It was about half as long as a football field and contained about 500 miles of wiring.

The machine was slow (taking 3-5 seconds per calculation) and inflexible (intact sequences of calculations could not change).

1946

Commercial TV began

1948

Another computer development spurred by the war was the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), produced by a partnership between the U.S. government and the University of Pennsylvania.

Consisting of 18,000 vacuum tubes, 70,000 resistors and 5 million soldered joints, the computer was such a massive piece of machinery that it consumed160 kilowatts of electrical power, enough energy to dim the lights in an entire section of Philadelphia.

Dec 1947

The first transistor was demonstrated by Schockley, Brattain and Barden

1954

Color TV broadcasting began

1955

Carl Frosch and Link Derick discovered Silicon

Sep 1958

Jack Kilby of TI demonstrated the first Ge IC. Later, Robert Noyace of Fairchild Semicon Introduced Si IC.

1959

Robert Noyce of Fairchild independently developed an integrated circuit that was fabricated using techniques similar to what is used today.

1960

American engineer Theodore Harold Maiman invented the LASER

1961

Push-button telephone began

1962

Nick Holonyak Jr. invented the LED

1967

The first handheld calculator invented

1968

Portable video recorders, video cassettes

1971

Intel introduces "computer on a chip"

1971

The Intel 4004 chip, took the integrated circuit one step further by locating all the components of a computer (central processing unit, memory, and input and output controls) on a minuscule chip. Whereas previously the integrated circuit had had to be manufactured to fit a special purpose, now one microprocessor could be manufactured and then programmed to meet any number of demands .

1977

Cellular Phones in testing phase, TV computer games became available

1985

Cellular Phones in operation

1996

Video CD’s

1997

IBM develops a copper-based chip technology

1998

Plastic transistors were developed

2000

Digital phones

2003

The third WiFi modulation standard, 802.11g, is ratified. Consumers products and WiFi "hotspots" proliferate.

2005

USB Flash Drives flourish. The solid state, inexpensive, pocketable storage media are taking sushiall kinds of shapes and sizes (pens, watches, little fuzzy creatures, and even sushi).

2006

Blu-Ray a new optical disc storage medium is released.

2007

Apple introduces a touch screen cell phone called the iPhone. Multi core processors Mobile GpS

2008

3G Subscription

2009

All Television broadcasting in the U.S. went digital by June 12, 2009.

2010

3D TV starts to become more widely available Apple releases its touchscreen tablet computer, the iPad.