Comments on AAAS science lesson?

Well, surely you remember that in the late 50s all the pocket transistor radios were simply called, "transistors." Everybody used that terminology. I'll bet you did too.

Not me! I didn't say anything at all until 1962, and by the time that I knew what a radio was I just called them "radio".

As a kid, I had a transistor radio that had just *one* transistor. Basically a crystal radio with a single transistor amplifier.

Not that this in any way excuses it, it's still a ridiculous error, but perhaps this EXPLAINS it: A few decades back (probably the 1950's and/or 1960's), transistor radios were often called by the shortened name "transistors." Perhaps the task of finding a couple of websites showing "transistors" was given to someone with this layman's understanding of the word.

I was born in the late '50's, and as a child in the '60's was annoyed when I heard that misuse of the terminology. My father was a ham radio operator, I built my first Heathkit at age eight, I'd seen and touched both transistors and tubes, and I knew (generally) what they were. It was a transistor RADIO, NOT a transistor. And it's STILL a transistor radio, even if all the active devices are FET's on a single piece of silicon and there are no bipolars.

No, nor did anyone I knew back then. Where did you hear this usage?

Bob

It was common enough that it has found its way into dictionaries:

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Feedback sent.

Graham

I took a load of BC108's to high school one time and said to a few mates that I had a pocketful of transistors. They were gob-smacked until they saw what I meant (then I was, um, gob-smacked). :-)

Ken