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Oral History
– Ray Andrejasich
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Ray,
please recount your first experience with transistors.
First of
all, my interest in electronics (we said “radio” in those days) started at
age 10. I was given a crystal radio by my older brother Frank. He was
attending a military high school at the time and built a set so he could
listen to night time radio after “lights out.” It had a galena crystal
probed by a copper cats-whisker and a beautiful set of high impedance Bell
earphones. That was in 1945 when the “bug” bit me. After that, I became a
frequent visitor of Army surplus electronic stores. Following the latest
technologies at the time, I “souped up” my crystal set by using the Army
surplus 1N34 diodes to replace my cantankerous galena crystal. Around
three years later (1948) the transistor became commercially available, a
product of Bell Laboratories. In 1951, I saved up my allowance and
purchased a Raytheon CK716 point contact transistor from Allied Radio in
downtown Chicago. At that time, $23.00 was a lot of money and my folks
thought I was crazy. But then again, the CK716 was a crazy transistor! It
came in a brass cylinder with two pins at one end. The metal case was the
base contact and the pins were the collector and emitter contacts. I had
to contact Cinch Corporation for a special socket (which thankfully they
sent at no charge). The CK716 was a combination detector/amplifier. In my
radio, it knocked the boots off the magnetic speaker and gave comfortable
room volume on ALL the Chicago stations.
Go
To Andrejasich Oral History, Page 3
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Oral History
– Ray Andrejasich
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Shown above top is a
photo of two Raytheon CK716 point contact transistors, which became
available commercially in 1951. Note the unique pin-out at the bottom of
the rightmost CK716. As mentioned by Ray, a special socket was required
for these early transistors, as shown with the CK716 at top left. Shown
also is a section of the 1953 Allied Radio Catalog, listing the remarkable
CK716 for $18. Ray had bought his CK716 in 1951, and the price then had
been $23 – that’s almost $200 in today’s dollars. Ray’s first-hand
experience with transistors began only three years after the public
announcement of the transistor in 1948.
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