Rebirth in America

After the record was recorded, Alex took the master tapes with him.

But he left several pressed copies of the record for Rudy, and everyone else got one as a souvenir. In the end, only two or three of these first edition records survived into the 21st century, and one of them is in Alex's hands.

Someone once put one up for auction in 1970, and it fetched a million dollars. After that, I never heard of such a thing again, and the value of this record became higher and higher, reaching the point where it is now priceless.

After these days of recording work, Alex realized that living in an era without computers was really inconvenient.

"It would be great if there was a computer! It would be much more convenient to record records like that. It's a pity that computers in this era are still military supplies. More importantly, the current computers are still the first generation and are terrifyingly large." Alex thought in his mind Can't help but complain.

etc! Computers at the beginning were all tube digital machines, which means transistors were not used yet!

Alex suddenly realized a big problem, that is whether to give him a proper push! Advance the computer technology in this world so that the era of computer popularization can come quickly. The question is, what can he do without attracting the attention of the Pentagon?

You know, from electron tubes to transistors, the computing speed of computers has increased from thousands to tens of thousands per second. Improved by more than 10 times. Most importantly, the size is much smaller. It's scary to think about this kind of technology appearing in the hands of an eight-year-old child.

Alex thought for a long time and found that he didn't seem to know much about computer hardware. However, he did know that the transition from tubes to transistors in computers was a very smooth process. All it took was replacing the original tubes with transistors. The problem is that there are not that many types of transistors now, and it will take a few years before there are enough transistors to replace electron tubes.

The first transistor was manufactured in 1947. In 1950, there were already bipolar transistors, which would not be truly commercialized until 1953. The question now is not whether Alex can invent it, but whether he can get access to high-tech products like transistors.

He laughed self-deprecatingly: "It's really unreasonable to worry about it. Whether I can get the transistor or not is a question."

After thinking about the problem, he put the problem aside, but he still planned to ask someone. If he could get a transistor, he wouldn't mind pretending to be a genius inventor. There are so many strange things in this world, why should he tie his hands and feet? People should live more freely.

The person Alex was looking for was a professor at the University of Chicago. Those professors still remembered him vividly and they were in constant contact with him. This time I just asked them to help. He was looking for the mathematics professor, whose name was Sawyer and who had been teaching in Chicago for more than ten years.

Soon, Professor Sawyer received news. He himself is not an expert in this field, but some of his colleagues and friends know. I happened to have a friend who was at Bell Labs and knew everything about transistors.

His friend was William Shockley, who happened to be one of the three people who invented the transistor. Shockley was working on bipolar transistors when he got a call from an old friend, and he said all he could. The information about the transistor was no longer a secret. It had already applied for a patent in 1947, which was news that shocked the world at the time.

"Sawyer, why do you suddenly ask about these things? I remember you were not very interested in transistors before." Shockley asked strangely.

Sawyer said unabashedly: "Yeah, I'm not interested even now. However, I have a kid who is very curious about your research and asked me to find out. By the way, do you have any information over there? I want to I want a copy, the more detailed it is, but of course, don’t give me the secrets of your laboratory. If anyone finds out, it will be hard for you and me to be kind."

Shockley laughed and said: "You still want secrets? Dream on! No problem, I have some outdated things here, you can take them. By the way, who is the kid you are talking about?"

Sawyer then told Alex's story, and emphasized that his IQ was as high as 220. He has great confidence in Alex and has been in contact with Alex for the past few years. Other professors at the school did not think Alex's IQ was that high. This was due to an error in the testing method used by Sawyer.

He had been studying the subject of IQ testing, and after being rejected, he felt very annoyed. So I tried to find evidence to prove that my view was correct.

"Wow! An IQ of 220 is much higher than mine!" Shockley said jokingly. He was not too interested in IQ tests either.

However, people in this era are superstitious about these things, and many people are studying them. Sawyer is one of the experts. Professor of mathematics is just his livelihood, and IQ testing is his hobby.

"This child has such a high IQ, what is his name? Maybe I will see him in the newspaper in the future."

"Sorry, I can't tell you his name. I made an agreement with his parents to keep their secrets."

"Okay, okay! You have been studying IQ tests. Is this thing effective?"

"Forget it if you don't believe it. Anyway, I think IQ testing is useful and allows us to find ways to improve the quality of human life. Through eugenics and eugenics, we can selectively retain people with high IQs and eliminate people with low IQs. kind."

"Your comments are dangerous, my friend! I remember that the Nazis also did this."

IQ tests have been around for more than a hundred years. During World War II, the Germans believed in this method and believed that people could be classified into three, six or nine grades through one test. They clamored that the Aryans were the best race!

Not only in Germany, but also in the United States, there was an era of crazy superstition about IQ. The United States was the first to launch the eugenics movement in human history. More than 30 states in the United States have implemented forced or secret sterilization surgeries on "non-eugenic groups" because the government believed that these people's IQs were too low and they would have children if they had offspring. Lower American IQ levels.

There are also laws in some states in the United States that require death row prisoners to undergo an IQ test. Once the IQ is below 70, they will be considered mentally retarded and unable to take responsibility for their actions, and the government shall not execute them.

Sawyer naturally knew those dark histories, and he retorted: "Since you don't believe in the accuracy of IQ tests, what are you worried about?"

Shockley was speechless by what he said, and the two hung up the phone after chatting for a while. Sawyer ignored Shockley's teasing. He believed in his own research and believed that Alex could eventually prove that his test was correct.

The information was quickly delivered to Alex, and after just a casual look, he discovered that the bipolar transistor had not been invented until now. He only knew that it should have been invented in 1950, but he didn't know who invented it.

As a science student, Alex certainly knew the principles and structure of bipolar transistors. This is how good education in China is. No matter what kind of knowledge, no matter whether it is useful or not, the school will try its best to put it into the students' minds.

The so-called bipolar transistor is actually a transistor composed of two back-to-back PN structures and has the function of current amplification. In this era, point contact transistors had just been created, and junction transistors had not yet been developed. For manufacturing technology, the conditions are mature, but people have not thought of using PN structure for manufacturing.

There are two basic structures of bipolar transistors: PNP type and NPN type. Among these three layers of semiconductors, the middle layer is called the base region, and the outer two layers are called the emitter region and the collector region respectively. When a small amount of current is injected into the base region, a larger current will be formed between the emitter region and the collector region. This is the amplification effect of the transistor.

Alex hesitated for a moment, but he still wrote down what he knew on a piece of paper, and casually listed the structures and voltage parameters of various transistors. Of course, they are all explained in the tone of conjecture.

Bipolar transistors are also called semiconductor diodes, which mainly rely on PN junctions. Depending on the PN structure surface, there are different diode types.

Point contact diodes are formed by pressing a metal needle on a single wafer of germanium or silicon material and then using the current method. This type of diode has a simple construction, is cheap, and has a wide range of applications.

There are also bonded diodes, alloy diodes, diffusion diodes, mesa diodes, planar diodes, etc., all of which Alex wrote on paper one by one with pictures and texts. He just studied casually for a while in his spare time singing, and he was pretty good at painting.

There are still some that have not been written out. Those are diodes that require alloy technology. It is difficult to implement with current technology.

Alex wrote it in great detail. This kind of thing would have been so bad in later generations, but it is the most advanced thing in this era.

The most critical thing is the theoretical parameters. With this part of the content, people familiar with transistor production can see it as a detailed design description drawing.

When Alex checked the information and wrote this description of the structure of the bipolar transistor, Sawyer was not idle either. He has been staring at Alex's movements and expressions. He has also read the information given by Shockley, and he can't understand the things on it.

Unexpectedly, after Alex read it, he pondered for a moment before getting a pen and paper, drawing and writing. He could see that the content above was the structural design of a transistor. What concerned him was that the transistors also had parameters listed.

"How did he do it?" Sawyer looked calm on the surface, but deep down he was already shocked.

Science is not about singing and painting. You can produce results just by patting your head. Anyone who dares to do this will definitely be labeled as an evil scientist. For example, Nikola Tesla, who claimed that he could conduct experiments in his mind, had achievements that were obvious to all, and modern society was built on his invention of alternating current. However, he was ostracized by the entire scientific community and even slandered as a liar. His end was extremely miserable in his later years.

Ordinary people may not know the legend of Nikola Tesla in the scientific community, but people of Sawyer's generation know it very well. UU Reading www.uukanshu.net People who don’t know Tesla will strongly deny Tesla’s achievements and think that inventions and creations can be made in the mind without experiments, which is the talk of a magician and completely the nonsense of a madman.

Things that science cannot understand are all classified as superstition. For the aliens among scientists, they will use the methods of religious guards to deal with witches, and try every means to eliminate them. Shortly after Tesla's death, all his achievements were erased by these people, so that decades later, people could only understand him through some unofficial records.

Only those who know Tesla well will be impressed by his intelligence. For example, Mark Twain once had a close relationship with Tesla, and he believed deeply in Tesla's remarks. Mark Twain saw Tesla create a ball of lightning and played with it in his hand. In his eyes, Tesla was full of mystery and difficult to understand, but he was not a liar.

To this end, he also wrote a novel based on Tesla. The novel is called "The Mysterious Stranger".

Sawyer was fortunate enough to meet Tesla. According to his judgment, Tesla was a very individual scientist. Others may not understand Tesla and attack his character because of it. Sawyer couldn't understand it, but he believed that Tesla might be naive, but he was definitely not a liar.

In this case, Tesla must be a genius that ordinary people cannot understand. So what's the difference between them? Is it IQ? Sawyer thought about it for a long time and finally devoted himself to the research of IQ tests, hoping to find out the secrets.

Less than ten years after Tesla's death, Sawyer saw a similar genius again. How could this not surprise him?