Electronics: The Life Story of a Technology

Electronics provides a welcome, comprehensive history of one of the late twentieth century's greatest technologies: electronic devices. Some of them, the laser and the microchip for example, have become household words. Yet their origins and operation are largely unknown to the general public, remaining mysterious outside the field of engineering. Their advent brought about many of the most important historical developments in recent memory―the rise of television, the Cold War, the Space Race, the growth of Asian semiconductor manufacturers, and the emergence of the surveillance society.

Electronics also relates the fascinating stories of how scientists and engineers created and commercialized such devices as the transistor, the Magnetron tube used to power microwave ovens, the CRT (cathode ray tube), the laser, the first integrated circuit, the microprocessor, and memory chips.

David L. Morton Jr. is a historian of technology with expertise in the history of sound recording, electronics, and electric power. He is the former research historian for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.