Who made the greatest contribution to electronics

Tesla

But you gotta rember Tesla's mechanical contributions as well, 'cause the mechanical contributions greatly affect the electronics world. At least the concepts are carried accross...

FOR THAT MATTER, REMEMBER ALL MECHANICAL CONTRIBUTIONS!!!!

D.J. said:

Although you are partially wrong on your last post. Franklin did fly a kite in a lightning strom, but the lightning did not touch the kite, he wasn't that crazy or he would have died. :lol:

It was an electrical storm and all the static electricity collected on his kite. A common misconception. At least thats what I read.

D.J.

Click to expand...

lol...never thought of it that way

Ah yes , 1747 was a very good year....
Benjamin Franklin experiments with static charges in the air and theorized about the existence of an electrical fluid that could be composed of particles, however it took him until 1752 to go fly that kite.

William Watson discharged a Leyden jar through a circuit, that began the comprehension of current and circuit.

Henry Cavendish started measuring the conductivity of different materials
Using his own bodies nervous system as a volt meter, it was his observations that most likely spawned the work of Italian physician, Luigi Galvani and his jerking frogs legs in 1786.

But the man who put us on the path to the world we live today would be..

English scientist, William Gilbert. For he first coined the term "electricity" from the Greek word for amber. Gilbert wrote about the electrification of many substances in his "De magnete, magneticisique corporibus". He also first used the terms electric force, magnetic pole, and electric attraction. Way back in 1600.

I had not considered Claude Shannon, though the contributions were definately significant. When I saw the post, I immediately thought of Harold Black, the inventor of negative feedback that is used in just about any amplifier, control system, etc. The other thought I had was Edwin Armstrong, he invented the superhetrodyne receiver. It is basically the type of radio circuit used in radar and radio communication systems. He later pushed the merits of FM broadcasting but he had so many tough battles (both for his technology and legal), he killed himself.

Agent 009 said:

_3iMaJ said:

For my field, probably Claude Shannon. The father of Information Theory.

Click to expand...

Can u specify why?

Click to expand...

Claude Shannon made huge breakthroughs in the field of Information Theory by finding an expression that described the ultimate channel capacity for any trasmission line. He's also come up with ideas that describe "randomness" better known as entropy.

I don't know if they have been mentioned yet, but let us not forget John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley of Bell Laboratories circa 1947. Computers would still be the size of large rooms, produce massive heat, and be relatively slow if not for the transistor that they invented.

Yes, the invention of the transistor was HUGE to say the least.

I'm always a fan of Moore's law which has been holding strong for the past quarter century.

IN the near future, all achievements of physics & physical sciences will fall into the shadow of history, including the atomic bomb, what will keep the limelight over itself shall be "MAxwell's Equations "!!!!!!!!!

but let us not forget John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley of Bell Laboratories circa 1947.

Click to expand...

:lol: yes lets not forget the biggest culprits



The end of the silicon road was known about pretty much after the first experiments began and now after some thirty years of throwing money and brains at the problem, the whisper that it may of all been an engineering rathole and cries of "WHAT?! this rival patent predates the silicon transistor"...

Let me explain, actually.... no, better I do not ,the world and where science meets business often defies the common sense..

Like the battle of the video recorders between Sony's Betmax system and VHS (V2000 was realy good but was a rank outsider) it's not about good science/ technology but who has the most manufacturing muscle/ influence.

Students of history will recall the failure of the first trans-atlantic cables, where the financial backers believed the use of high voltages would speed the passage of a signal.

The modern equivilent is the research into using a form of carbon as as a high temperature semicondutor, which really set the political fires going as the form of carbon that proved to be usefull is better known as "diamond"... after all would diamonds really be a girls best friend if you could pick them up "dime a dozen"?

Around the same time time as the work at Bell others were working along similiar lines, there are more semiconductors than just common silicon or germanium and one in particular is set to make a comeback...

Samsung Electronics has announced it is producing 64Mb chip samples of a new memory technology, PRAM (phase-change RAM). Combining the speed of dynamic memory and the non-volatility of flash, this is the first practical example of a technology with the potential to replace both.
Also known as ovionic memory, PRAM works by electrically heating tiny amounts of chalcogenide( basically doped glass), a material currently used in rewritable DVDs.

It takes remarkable men to make remarkable discoveries.
Judged by any standards, Stanford R. Ovinshinsky is a remarkable man.
[yes he gave his name to Ovionics :wink: ]
In 1958 he suceeded in making a functional switching device based upon a a thin layer of amphourous oxide on tantalum metal. This was at complete odds with "accepted theory" and buried by the establisment accordingly.
[Ovinshinsky's crystaline structures were disorginsed as opposed to Bardeen/Brattain/Shockley with thier very pure crytals]




* As for Moore's Law...
he is still alive , read what he has to say about what he said :wink:

** "Pure" Is the olde english word for dog excrement