Semiconductors are important. They allow us to make transistors1, which allow us to make integrated circuits, which allow us to build calculators and flight control systems and iPads. The transistor is the unequivocal poster child of semiconductor physics. It was developed in 1947 by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley at Bell Labs. It may have far-reaching significance in electronics and electrical communication. This post is not about the transistor. It’s about the beginning of an industry that has changed the way we communicate. It’s also sort of about capitalism. History In 1874, German physicist Ferdinand Braun created a diode…

From page 33 of the Apple II User’s Guide: Sooner or later you will hit the RESET key when you did not intend to. It is inevitable, unless your Apple II requires you to type CTRL-RESET instead of just plain RESET. You can reduce the hazard by carefully prying off the plastic keytop, leaving just the keyswitch shaft available (Figure 2-9). You can take this one step further and make it physically harder to push down the RESET key. Get a small rubber washer about 3/8 inches inner diameter, 1/2 inch outer diameter, and 1/8 inch thick. Remove the RESET keytop as shown in Figure 2-9. Work the washer over the exposed square flange of the keyshaft as shown in Figure 2-10. Replace…

From Learn C The Hard Way: I’m going to guess that you come from a language for weaklings. One of those “usable” languages that lets you get away with sloppy thinking and half-assed hackery like Python or Ruby. Or, maybe you use a language like Lisp that pretends the computer is some purely functional fantasy land with padded walls for little babies. Maybe you’ve learned Prolog and you think the entire world should just be a database that you walk around in looking for clues. Even worse, I’m betting you’ve been using an IDE, so your brain is riddled with memory holes and you can’t even type out an entire function’s name without hitting CTRL-SPACE every 3 characters you type. Br…