The history, present status and future perspective of electronics and electronic technologies

전자공학 및 전자기술의 역사, 현황 그리고 미래

Electronics has different meanings to different people and in different countries. Hence, let me difine the term in the sense that it is used here. Electronics in the science and the technology of the passage of charged particles in a gas, in a vacumn, or in a semiconductor. The beginning of electronics came in 1895 when H. A. Lorentz postulated the existence of discrete charges called electrons. Two years later J.J. Thompson found these electrons experimentally. In the same year (1897) Braun built what was probaly the first electron tube, essentially a primitive cathode-ray tube. It was not until the start of the 20th century that electronics began to take technological shape. In 1904 Fleming invented the diode which he called a valve. This era begins with the invention of the transistor about 30 years ago. The history of this invention is interesting. M.J. Kelly, director of research(and later president of Bell Laboratories), had the foresight to realize that the telephone system needed electronic switching and better amplifiers. Vacuum tubes were not very reliable, principally because they generated a great deal of heat even when they were not being used, and, particularly, because filaments burned out and the tubes had to be replaced. In 1945 a solid-state physics group wa formed. The foregoing completes the history of electronics and electronic industries up to 1978. There is already a start toward a merging of the computer and the communication industries which might be called information manipulation. This includes storage of information, sorting, computation, information retrieval, and transmission of data. This combination of the computer and the communication fields will penetrate many disciplines. Applications will be made in the fields of law, medicine, biological sciences, engineering, library services publishing banking, reservation systems, management control, education, and defense.