55: Fab Four

We focus on the Group 4 elements: carbon (as an inorganic element), silicon, germanium--and a teeny bit about tin. We hear of the new mineral moissanite and Henri Moissan, about the race to synthesize diamonds with Tracy Hall, the weird properties of semiconductors found in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the first semiconductor device by Jagdish Chandra Bose, and quantum-mechanical explanations. We reach the production of the first transistors in the early 1950s--and how they got their name from John Pierce.

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