Electronics

The discovery of the electron, a milestone in the history of the scientific discoveries, initiated the electronic era. The inventors of the epoch and posterior, performed some inventions without knowing about the electron, with false ideas about the nature of the electricity.

For example, Graham Bell invented the telephone. However, the perfection of the telephone, the invention of the transistor, of the modern communication, of the computation, etc. would not be possible without knowing the electron, and of the laws that follows its behaviour. The discovery of the electron changed the form of doing science and technology. Changed also the way of the mankind history.

In the last quarter of XX century the change was born. Fifteen year before Thomson discovery, Thomas Alva Edison found that a weak electric current traveled between two electrodes inside a bulb of glass partially evacuated of air. He patented the discovery and went ahead perfectioning the electric bulb.

Six years after the Thomson discovery, the British inventor J. A. Fleming applied the discovery of Edison to create the thermionic valve. Also known as tube or diode, or electric current rectifier valve. The old electronics from the beginning of the XX century used extensively this dispositive.

Three years after the Fleming invention, the United States inventor L. de Forest inserted to the Fleming diode, inside the two electrodes, a third electrode. With this, changing the applied voltage, could control the electric current flux from electrode to electrode. In this way, he invented the triode. He patented it. Applied it to the electronics. And commercialized it.

Those inventors conceived the electric current like a fluid -or fluids-. Like a series of stretching and contractions of the ether. Likewise the XX century electrodynamics proposed. The Thomson experiments showed the false of those ideas. The electricity becomes to be the flux of corpuscles electrically charged. Thomson called them in this way. G. Stoney called them electrons. Thomson never accepted this name. Electron term won.

Electrons. Corpuscles that transport electric charge. The electronics was born. It was the decade of 1920. Thanks to the electrons there are a vast number of practical applications already performed. The cellular telephone, the satellite communications, the TV receptor, the computers, the microwave oven, laser printer, the fax machine, etc. And many others that rest to be done. Likewise the ultraspeed electronics, a switch that make use of the nature wave of the electron, and many others.

Those others. The physicists are looking for, working in the industrial laboratories. This organization of the modern centers of innovations and technological developments is, partially, thanks to the electron. Its discovery changed the way of doing technology. Now its required high trained people in physics, and in other sciences. This personnel graduates from universities with a Ph. D. degree, to apply the quantum mechanics, and other theories, to produce that innovations. The romantic image of the inventors, very abstracted from the world and behind strange apparatuses, is out of date. The modern inventions are made in the industrial laboratories. That inventions are based in the manipulation of the atoms, the molecules, and other particles; this is, in a superior knowledge of the laws of nature.

Many inventions are in the waiting line. The future writers will write about them. We will relate that past achievements. We will show how the inventor room becomes a modern industrial laboratory.

The Fleming diode and the triode of de Forest showed many serious technical difficulties. The valve, that contained the electrodes, was not completely evacuated. The gas got ionized to the pass of the electrons, and limited the pass of the electric current. Therefore the capabilities of the valve were limited. It did not work amplifying high electric currents. The Western Electric, the General Electric, and $AT \& T$, tried to solve the problem. Because they were interested in exploiting the valve commercially. For example, in a telephone central. At the end, they succeeded. The Dr. in physics Harold Arnorld, graduated under the direction of R. Millikan, working for the Western Electric, solved the problem in 1912.

The diagnosis and solution of H. Arnold was based in a superior knowledge of the nature. He evacuated completely the valve, changed the material to fabricate the electrodes, modified the design of the valve, etc. In a year, the Western Electric constructed the high vacuum thermionic valve. And distributed it. The telephone centrals, and other companies resulted highly benefited.

The big companies understood the benefits of the physics. They created big laboratories to the industrial research. The Western Electric created the Bell telephone in 1925. There the physicists made big scientific and technological progresses.

This company improved the high vacuum valve. With it, the physicists C. Davisson and L. Germer established the wave nature of the electrons. An important step in understanding nature. This wave nature of the particles had been theoretically proposed, years before, by L. de Broglie. For this experiment, Davisson shared the 1937 Nobel prize on physics with G. Thomson. In part, the improvement of the high vacuum valve consisted in coating the cathode, made of tungsten, with a thin film of oxide. The theoretical works of E. Fermi and P. Dirac, in quantum mechanics applied to the solid state, allowed these advances. The thin film of oxide reduces the metal function work. And the electrons can escape from the metal more easily. In this way, the valve energy operation is reduced considerably. The annualized save of energy to $AT \& T$ meant million of dollars.