The New York Times wrote on page 46 in the column “The News of Radio” on July 1st 1948 about 9 topics. Most about shows that get air, or that WNEW will transmit reports of traffic conditions. The last topic reads as follows:
A device called a transistor, which has several applications in radio where a vacuum tube ordinarily is employed was demonstrated for the first time yesterday at Bell Telefone Laboratories, 463 West Street, where it was invented.
The device was demonstrated in a radio receiver, which contained none of the conventional tubes. It also was shown in a telephone system and in a television unit controlled by a receiver on a lower floor. In each case the transistor was employed as an amplified, although it is claimed that it also can be used as an oscillator in that it will create and send radio waves.
In the shape of a small metal cylinder about a half-inch long, the transistor contains no vacuum, grid, pleas or glass envelope to keep the air away. Its action is instantaneous, there being no warm-up delay since no heat is developed as in a vacuum tube.
The working parts of the device consist solely of the two fine wires that run down a to a pinhead of solid semi-conductive material soldered to a metal base. The substance of the metal base amplifies the current to it by one wire and the other wire carries away the amplified current.
NY Times July 1st 1948, Page 46
The author did in my opinion actually rather well in describing this novel thing: The essential term semi-conductor shows up for instance. Bell Labs was a big deal back then. They knew what they had with this thing they came up with. They also had the capability to create a good presentation. While it would take a couple of years for this thing to impact the world, it was the one key invention that would kick off a change that to this days influences the world in the greatest way. The room you sit in has more transistors in it than there are humans on the planet. Apples A14 chip for instance puts 134 million transistors on square will a mm length.
That the NY Times could have not seen coming. Not many people could have. And of those that could in 1948 many actually worked at Bell Labs. Must have been weird to know about the future while the world was blissfully ignorant.
For a while ‘a Transistor’ was also the name for a cheap, small, often portable radio. Like the Regency TR-1.
In that respect the NY Times was doing OK to write about the topic under “Radio”. But they certainly didn’t see it coming. Not many people did. Easy to feel superior, now that we have hindsight. But overcoming this notion is worth it: What else do we not get, see, notice? Why did the people in 1948 did not realize what would be possible? Probably since people are stuck in the world they know. They read what happens through their minds. They world view. They can not imagine that something can change everything.