[Thursday] The Transistor is 75 years old!

[Michael Thompson]

That is a common discussion in the restoration forums.

I refer one school of thought as the Smithsonian. Everything donated is an artifact to be conserved and possibly displayed. Everything is a static display, nothing is interactive. I am not a fan of this philosophy.

I think that interacting with an artifact yields a completely different and better experience than just observing. Our visitors always comment that the giant steam engines are really quiet. A static display won’t give that experience. Using an electric motor to turn the engine gives a false sense of the engines behavior. We do a really good job of keeping our steam powered artifacts near original condition and operating the way they were designed. Running them at 1/10 of the normal speed is a safety issue, and our visitors understand that.

We made a new cylinder head for the exploded Corliss. You can’t see the new part, and now the engine runs and can be demonstrated. We even kept the original parts so we could restore it to the exploded and nonfunctional condition.

Our wireless side needs a lot of improvement. Few of the artifacts are demonstrable, and we have way too many things on display. We are working on restorations, but that takes time. Thelissa has some great ideas on improving the wireless displays. That will also take time.

Ken is restoring a National radio. He is replacing old components with modern ones, but the new components are inside the chassis where you can’t see them. It will look original, and our visitors will be able to interact with it.

The board is working on some policies to guide the museum. We should collect everyone’s ideas on preserving and restoring artifacts and write some guidelines for future projects.

> On Dec 16, 2022, at 4:54 PM, David Crowell via Thursday <thursday at newsm.org> wrote:
> 
> One of the links in the Len's original link has some thoughts to ponder about restoring museum artifacts.
> Read the paragraphs in the section:
> Overcoming the “inherent vice” of Bardeen’s music box
> 
> 
> John Bardeen’s Terrific Transistorized Music Box
> 
> John Bardeen’s Terrific Transistorized Music Box
> In 1949 an engineer at Bell Labs built three music boxes that could electronically produce five distinct notes. ...
> 
> Dave Crowell
> 
> 
> 
> On Wednesday, December 14, 2022 at 06:10:17 PM EST, Len Arzoomanian via Thursday <thursday at newsm.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> Some IEEE articles on the development of the Transistor. I like the fact that the inventors didn’t really understand how the point contact worked. Kind of like how a cats whisker becomes a diode when it touches a galena. It’s all magic!
> 
> Len
> 
> https://spectrum.ieee.org/special-reports/the-transistor-at-75/
> 
> 
> Sent using the mobile mail app
> 
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