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What is a transistor?
A transistor is an electronic component known as a semiconductor.The first practical transistor was invented in 1947 and became analternative to vacuum tubes (valves) and rela…ys. Early transistorswere made with germanium but silicon is used almost universally insemiconductor manufacturing. A single transistor is a fewmillimetres wide and tall and has three terminals. It works bytransferring a high resistance input to a lower resistance output.The transfer of resistance gave rise to the name trans - istor. Atransistor will generate a large change in current for a giveninput or a large change in voltage. There are numerous ways to usethem and the applications and science of the transistor can fillmany books - too complex to discuss in detail in this answer.Transistors are good amplifiers and are found in radios, musicequipment, video systems in their role as an amplifier. They arealso very efficient switches and because they will switch from lowto high, are common in binary circuits. The transistor is the basisof all digital computers. A modern CPU chip in a computer isactually made of many billions of transistors inside the integratedcircuit. A typical computer will have trillions of transistors intotal. For further reading, take a look for basic electronicstutorials. All of them will have detailed descriptions of the way atransistor works and demonstrate the more common applications. (MORE)
