Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to The History Guy podcast Counterfactuals. What is a
counterfactual in the context of studying history, It is a
kind of analysis where we examined what might have happened
had historical events gone differently as a thought experiment. The
goal is to learn and understand history as it is
by talking about what it could have been as a
(00:27):
twist on the historical stories that we tell on the
History Guy YouTube channel. This is a series of podcasts
that dwell on that eternal question what if. I'm Josh,
a writer for the YouTube channel and son of the
History Guy. If you're a fan of the channel, you
already know Lance the History Guy himself. To liven up
our discussions on what might have happened, we have invited
(00:48):
Brad wagnan history officionado and a longtime friend of The
History Guy to join us. Remember that if you'd like
to support us, you can find us on Patreon, YouTube,
and locals dot com. Join us as we discuss what
deserves to be remembered and what might have been. On
today's episode, we talk about the development of some of
(01:10):
the most important communication technologies in history, from the telegraph
to the transistor, and what the world might be like
if we went without them. Without further ado, let me
introduce the history guy.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Electronic communication. The ability to send a message across vastid
distances virtually instantaneously transformed human culture. Some people consider Samuel
Finley Breese Moore is an American inventor, to be the
father of electronic communication with the invention of the telegraph,
and to give just a brief example of how powerful
that communication can be. Some people argue today that the
(01:49):
timing of that invention played a critical role in the
timing of the American Civil War. The argument is that
instantaneous communication, or the fact that speech is given by
different people across the country could be sent by telegraph
and printed in newspapers the next day, started to break
down trust between fract factions and break down the alliances
that had prevented disagreements from turning into fractures. The argument
(02:15):
isn't that the telegraph caused the Civil War. The argument
is that the telegraph wrote down the system that had
to that point prevented the Civil War, and if that
were the case, it would have been profoundly disappointing to
Samuel Morse, who considered himself very much opposed to factionalism.
He called himself an American who knew neither north nor south,
nor east nor west, but considered everyone in the United
(02:36):
States to be a fellow countryman. Still, you can't say
that Samuel F. B. Morse did not recognize the potential
of his invention, As he said in one of the
very first telegraphs ever since May twenty fourth, eighteen forty four,
what hath god wroughted electronic communication? Today, the technological descendants
(02:57):
of Morse's telegraph rule the world more than ever before,
and December twenty third represents an important date in the
development of that technology. In fact, some people argue that
a small demonstration in Bell Laboratories on December twenty third,
nineteen forty seven is one of the single most important
events in human history, and the developments that took us
(03:18):
to that seminole date deserve to be remembered. Samuel Morse
and the telegraph for a prime example of the powerful
effect that invention can have on history, and this is
even more clear if you understand his specific role in
one of the key advancements of the modern age. Morse
was not the first to recognize that an open enclosed
circuit could be used for communication. It wasn't even the
(03:40):
first to build one. There are several inventors who claim
to have invented the telegraph ahead of Samuel Morse, but Morse,
with a couple of collaborators, made two vital contributions that
gave him claim to the title as the father of
electronic communication. First, with the help of chemistry professor Leonard Gale,
he the the relay addresses a fundamental problem with electronic
(04:03):
communication that the signal degrades with distance. That limit meant
that telegraphs were limited to a fairly short range, not
devices that could communicate around the world. The solution that
Morrise Gale designed the relay works as a repeater. They
refreshed the signal coming in from one circuit by transmitting
it on another. Relay is not much changed or still
(04:23):
used in many settings today. Secondly, working with machinist Alfred Bayale,
Morse developed Morse Code, the ability to use simple open
and closed circuits and just two signals, a dot and
a dashed to communicate language, thus making the telegraph a
practical means of communication. These two developments the ability to
amplify signals that it can be heard and the ability
(04:45):
to turn the simplest electronic signal into communication weren't just
keys to making a practical telegraph, they were keys to
the development of the modern world. As with the development
of telegraphy, the development of wireless teleography can be attributed
to many inventors. Notably we all know Marconi. Marconi developed
(05:05):
the first practical operating radio transmitters and receivers in eighteen
ninety four and was able to make great strides and
the effective distance of wireless telegraphy through his understanding of
antennas to finding Marconi's law. But Marconi's radios had significant limits.
The receiver was only powered by the power that reached
the antenna. Thus antennas had to be massive and transmitters
(05:26):
had to use huge amounts of power, and still, no
matter the antenna, the signal was weak. Marconi radio required
headsets to hear and the receiver only her dots and
dashes using Morse's code. While wireless telegraphy had important applications,
particularly the ability to transmit to ships at sea, wireless
telegraphy lacked a critical component. It did not have a
(05:46):
version of Morse's relay to truly change the world, it
needed amplification. Like toleography, The answer to the problem of
amplification can be attributed to many inventors, but the one
most commonly attributed with the key invention was lead to Forest.
De force contribution was the invention of the Audion, which
was the first triote in nineteen oh six. Interestingly, DeForest
(06:09):
did not invent the Audion with the idea of amplification.
It was built as a radio receiver. The Audion uses
a vacuum tube, although DeForest's early audions still had residual
gas in the tube. The Audion included three electrodes or
electrical conductors, a heated filament, a grid, and a plate.
The gas in the tube would be heated, creating an
(06:30):
electrical current that was affected by radio waves. When the
tube was subjected to radio waves, those would close a
circuit which could be heard via headphones. While the Force
had invented a new form of radio receiver which we
could market without patent disputes, he did not at the
time realize its most important potential. The audion produced gain
(06:51):
since the headphones could be hooked to a battery. The
Audion did not, like other receivers, rely entirely on the
power that reached the antenna from the transmitter. The audion
could use a lower power radio wave to direct a
higher power stream of electricity the signal was amplified. That
meant that a signal from a weak transmitter could be
heard over a much greater distance. While it took time
(07:13):
before researchers really understood the amplifying effect of the audion tube,
its impact was enormous. In brief, the heated film that
creates electrons set to a process called thermionic commission. The
electrons move freely through the near vacuum of the tube,
and this creates a current between the cathode, which creates
the stream of electrons, and the metal plate, the positively
(07:35):
charged anode that attracts the electrons. The third electrode is
the low power varying signal that acts like a gate
across the stream. It's negatively charged that repels some electrons.
Positively charge it attracts them, so the low power charge
controls the more powerful stream of electrons in exact proportion.
This means a small signal could be made much louder.
(07:55):
Tubes could amplify both a transmitter and a receiver. And
meant that radio waves were no longer limited entirely by
how much power reached an antenna, and could amplify signal
beyond dots and dashes. The forest invention of the audion
tube initiated the field of electronics, the physics, engineering, technology,
and application that deals with the emission, flow, and control
(08:17):
of electrons in both vacuums and matter. The eventual applications
far exceeded that recognized by the Forest at the time.
Triads could serve as a repeater amplifier for telephones, much
like Morse's repeater, but transmitting the full range of voice,
making long distance telophony possible. Previously telephones were limited and
ranged about eight hundred miles. The triode allowed radio to
(08:39):
broadcast full sound, not just dots and dashes, and loudly
enough that could be heard without headphones, allowing a radio
that a family could sit around and hear. Radio went
from a simple message system to a medium of mass
communication after Atlantic Telephone and Telegraph purchased to force patents
in nineteen thirteen. The tubes are developed to create public
address systems, sound recording systems, and then synchronized sound systems
(09:02):
for motion pictures. Allowing talkies. These systems massively impacted culture
and history, and they allowed a truly mass medium that,
unlike print, did not require liberacy, was free from physical
boundaries of delivery. Person can now receive mass media content
while doing other work. Music and entertainment were transformed, and
entire genres of music owe their existence to the radio
(09:24):
that was allowed by amplifying tubes. People became more involved
in news and events of the day, developed more meaningful
relationships with their political leaders, whose voices and faces now
became familiar in many ways. The most powerful leaders of
the twentieth century, people like Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and
of course Adolf Hitler, were creatures of the era of
(09:44):
electronic amplification, But applications for these amplifying tubes went beyond communication.
The first computers machines that can be instructed to carry
out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations were mechanical. These
computers used gears or pulleys, and the calculations were derived
from the mechanical process. Such computers go back to antiquity.
(10:06):
For example, the abacus, a calculating device that may date
back more than four thousand years mechanical computers capable more
complex mathematical calculations that could be programmed. For example, English
mathematician Charles Babbage's difference engine were developed in the nineteenth century.
Mechanical computers were enhanced by early electronics, using electrical relays
to turn the mechanical levers, increase speed and decrease size,
(10:30):
creating marvels like the US Navy's Torpedo Data computer used
on Second World War submarines, in which could do advance
trigonometrical calculations needed to determine torpedo firing solutions. In fact,
what many considered to be the first modern computer, the
Z three, built by German inventor Conrad Zuza in nineteen
forty one, was electro mechanical. Zeus's machine used telephone relays
(10:51):
and was the first to define a code based on
the switch being turned off and on, rather than purely
mechanical aspects like gear sizes, thus making it a digital
as opposed to the earlier analog computers. Thus, Samuel Morse's
relay became the basis for the language used to program
virtually all digital computers. Binary use of just two signals,
(11:12):
just like the telegraphs dot and dash to create an
infinitely complex message. If you understand how the telephone relays
worked in ZUSA Z three and how the audion tube
by DeForest worked, then you see the potential. A triode
essentially is a device where one electrode sends a message
to two other electrodes, which allows you to send a
(11:34):
binary message without the need for the mechanical switch electronically
at the speed of light. The first computer which used
vacuum tubes for the logic circuitry was invented at Iowa
State University in nineteen thirty nine, but it had limited
purpose and was built not to be programmable, but to
solve a set of linear equations. Another early example of
(11:55):
so called first generation or vacuum tube computers was the
Colossus machines, built between nineteen forty three and nineteen forty
five and used by British intelligence to do the mathematical
calculations that allowed code breakers to parse through the huge
number of potential settings on a German Enigma code machine.
There are eventually ten Colossus machines, with the earliest using
some fifteen hundred vacuum tubes. Machines in their essential role
(12:19):
in breaking the German code maturely affected the outcome of
the Second World War. Further developments included the US built
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer or INIAC, capable of solving
a large class of numerical programs through programming. Completed in
nineteen forty five, INIAC use some twenty thousand vacuum tubes,
(12:40):
was a thousand times faster than electro mechanical computers. But
vacuum tubes are, of course relatively large and fragile. Tubes
take time to worm up and require large amounts of
electrical energy and thus produce large amounts of heat. Despite
being marbles of their age, they require large rooms to
be able to do what by today's standards, there were
very few calculations, which is how we get to the
(13:03):
importance of December twenty third. In nineteen twenty three, Polish
American inventor Julius Lillenfeld patented a method and apparatus for
controlling electric current. The idea was a solid state device
that used an electric field to control the flow of
current using semiconductive materials. Semiconductive materials are materials whose electrical
(13:26):
conductivity sits in between a conductor and an insulator. For
such materials, the resistance falls as their temperature rises. Since
the electrical properties of these materials can be affected by
electrical fields, they could work both as an amplifier and
as a switch, much like the Forest's audion tubes, but
they would be smaller, less fragile, and require smaller amounts
(13:48):
of energy. Despite the promise of his idea, the quality
and purity of the available semiconductors at the time was
insufficient for Lillenfeld to produce a working version, and the
patent went largely unknowtied. Following the Second World War, Bell
Labs in Manhattan formed a group dedicated to finding a
solid state alternative to the vacuum tube. Like Lillenfield, they
(14:10):
had trouble producing a working version un till it came
upon the idea of working with the semiconductor's surface state
rather than an external electrical field. In nineteen forty seven,
the team of physicists John Bardeen, Walter Bratton, and William
Shockley managed to create a working device that used two
foil leads to disrupt the surface state across the semiconductor
germanium a small charge in one gold lead, which changed
(14:34):
the resistance of the germanium, changing the electron flow. In fact,
the charge in the second contact was larger than the
change in the first. Thus the device operated as an amplifier.
Another team member, John Robinson Pierce, created a name for
the new device. As vacuum tubes relied on trans conductance,
(14:54):
the new device worked by trans resistance. A device that
used trans resistance was thus called a transistor. They first
demonstrated the working device to colleagues on December twenty third,
nineteen forty seven, and that date has become enshrined as
the birthday of the transistor. The magazine Computer World described
the importance of this date. The transistor, they argued in
(15:15):
two thousand and seven, is the most important invention of
the twentieth century. Civil engineer Trevor English was more direct,
calling the transistor the world's most important thing. For their discovery, Shockley, Bardeen,
and Bratton were awarded the nineteen fifty six Nobel Prize
in physics. It's not just the nature of transistors. Amplifiers
(15:38):
that make things like radios, televisions and cell phones small
enough to hold, and switches that allow far more processes
in far less space with far less energy. Than the
vacuum tubes that preceded them. It is also how quickly
the technology has been able to advance. After several developments,
Bell Labs engineers mohamma Atla and Dowan Khan developed the
(15:59):
metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistor, otherwise known as the
MOSS or moss VAT. The device was the first truly
scalable transistor. It could be easily manufactured placed in an
integrated circuit, essentially many tiny transistors stamped into a single
sheet of semiconductive material. The MOSS fat is included in
virtually all modern electronics. Billions are manufactured every day, and
(16:25):
estimated thirteen sextillion were manufactured between nineteen sixty and twenty eighteen.
It is the single most frequently manufactured device in human history.
The evolution of transistor technology has been astounding. In nineteen
sixty five, Gordon Moore, a founder of Intel, noted that
the number of transistors per square inch on an integrated
(16:47):
circuit doubled every year since their invention. He predicted the
trend would continue, and it has to this day. The
astounding trend is now called Moore's law. How do you
encapsulate the importance of a technology that has transformed nearly
every field of human industry. How do you account for
(17:10):
the lives saved by the medical advances that it's allowed,
the lives enriched by the increased availability and reliability of
transportation that it caused, the impact on science and technology
of the huge ability to aggregate and access information, the
virtual shrinking of the world through electronic communication. How do
you quantify the importance of a technology that allowed us
(17:33):
to go to the moon with a guidance computer that
had only some thirty two thousand bits of RAM, one
millionth of what is on a modern cell phone. How
can you express the importance of a technology that takes
the computational power of the colossus that helped to win
the Second World War and places it on the point,
(17:55):
not the head, the point of a pin. And like
Morris's telegraph, will all that bring us together? Or were
tear us a part? How do you talk about the
importance of the technology whose anniversary we celebrate on December
(18:16):
twenty third. I don't have the words for it. I
can only echo those of Samuel Morse. What hath God wrought?
Speaker 1 (18:28):
Now for the fun part, where I the history guy
himself and longtime friend of the history guy Brad Wagman
discuss what the world might look like if everything had
gone a little different. So you talk a lot in
this episode about various things, not just transistors, but kind
of the stuff that led up to transistors. But I
(18:49):
think there are a lot of ways we can talk
about how this kind of could have gone differently as
a counterfactual. I think the biggest one for in a
lot of ways is what would the world look like
if we simply had not invented the transistor and had
been stuck with the vacuum tubes.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Or before that, because it goes all the way back
to talking about the telegraph and that sort of thing. So,
I mean, it's a hard enough question to ask people today,
can you go a day without your cell phone? So
because you know, the computational power that's in a cell
phone could be done with transistors. It would be you know,
a multi story skyscraper that would have you know, a
permanent staff replacing audio tubes. Yeah, but I mean even
(19:30):
it goes even goes before that, and actually that's to
that instead. I'm actually a little bit more expert there,
and it's more interesting to talk about the telegraph. But
one thing to say about all of these technologies here
is that everyone that I mentioned in the episode, someone
else can claim credit for other than the person that
I talked about. And and that's so you could cut
(19:50):
when you argued as a counterfactual. The thing is, this
really wasn't about any particular inventor. This was, for the
most part, when it occurred technology that was just right.
There were lots of people working on it. They were,
I mean, you know the telephone shoot, I mean, Bell
and Gray were kind of tripping over each other to
see who could run in and get there, you know,
in their first So but it does make an interesting
discussion because what if we had gone with, say Tesla's
(20:14):
idea of radio as opposed to Marconi's idea of radio.
How might things be different if we hadn't if it
hadn't been a Bell telephone team that had been at
the transistor, if it come from if it had occurred
in Russia, if it occurred with a government team or
something like that, would it be different? So there's plenty
of interesting questions though we you know, we can't certainly ask,
you know, the simple question, say, how different would life
(20:36):
be without computers, which is funny. You don't know because
you're young, but I mean, Brad and I are or old.
We lived in the nineteen seventies when no one saw
a computer, when there were very few computers in the world,
and they were doing relatively few things. And you know,
you know, we survived. How much have computers changed our lives?
You know, you can see it, you know, you can say, oh, yeah,
(20:57):
we're live without computers. But could we realize I mean
that we could spend hours and hours and hours. I
wanted to talk about the telegraph though, for a couple
of reasons. One is there's a very real possibility that
the telegraph wouldn't have came when it came. And that's
another episode that I mentioned before, and that is this
There was this point if you go to the capital,
(21:19):
the United States Capitol Building, inside the rotunda, there's these
massive paintings. Four of those were done by John Trumbull,
but four others were still undone in the eighteen forties
and the Congress was making a decision over who would
paint those and Samuel Finley Breece Morse was the head
of the American Academy of Design and the best known
(21:40):
historical painting in America at the time, and he was
actively trying to get those commissions, and for various political reasons,
he didn't. But I mean, he honestly thought that he
might get all four commissions like Trumbull did. Had that happened,
that would have been the rest of Morse's life. Now,
lots of people were working on the telegraph at the time,
(22:01):
but the contributions that Morse made, and he didn't make
him by himself, either of them, but the contributions that
he made that I mentioned in the episode, the relay
and Morse code, were very critical to turning the telegraph
into a communication device. So had Morse gotten the commission
to do those paintings, because he didn't get the commission,
that's when he went and worked on the telegraph. He
had invented the telegraph, and he'd had the idea of
(22:23):
the telegraph, but he hadn't invented it yet. Had he
got those commissions on those paintings, Morse probably never turns
to the idea of the telegraph. How long does that
delay the telegraph. It's kind of hard to say, because
because he had a couple of parts that were I
mean the idea of opening closed circuits was ripe and
plenty of people working on it, but the idea of
the relay which allowed that circuit to operate over a
(22:43):
long distance, and the epiphany that we could use a
dot and dash code in order to make that. Of course,
the dot and dash code essentially becomes binary communication, right,
which is, you know, transistors don't mean anything without essentially
dots and dashes. Then that could have delayed. So there's
it's really fair to say that it's possible that that
(23:03):
counterfactual could have happened. That Morse never turns to the telegraph,
and how does that delay the telegraph? And there were
a couple things I want to mention from other episodes.
One is that there's there's a fairly strong argument says
the extinction of the passenger pigeon came because of the telegraph,
and that is, there were so many of these birds
you'd never kill them all. But they got to the
(23:25):
point where they would they would send from the telegraph
wires where they were roosting, and then they would go
there by train, and then they would catch them in
the roost. And if you don't have that instantaneous communication,
then you're not able to concentrate hunting in the way
they did. Uh, And that story is interesting. I mean,
we could do that as our own counterfactual. Well, you
know what if it had become extinct because the passenger
pigeon so affected the ecology of North America, so that
(23:49):
I mean, it could be that the forest of North
America would be completely different if Morse had gotten a
painting contract, because there wouldn't have been telegraph wires that
caused the extinction of the passenger pitcheon. And another argument
that I used to make when I was teaching at
the Universe at Northern Arizona University, and this was an
(24:10):
argument that was advanced that essentially said it was the
telegraph that broke down the system that had managed to,
you know, maintain an equilibrium between north and South, and
essentially that the telegraph caused the Civil War. What that
argument is is that it used to be that, you know,
you had Republicans and Democrats, but they crossed regional boundaries,
(24:31):
and so if you're a Republican, you said one thing
when you're in the north, and then when you're in
the South, you said something that was probably more friendly
to slavery. You know, democrats the same way, and you
could get away with that, You could get away with
giving different messages in both ones because even though your
message might be printed in the paper, it's going to
show up weeks later and no one really thinks much
about it. The telegraph meant that if you went down
there and talked that it was in the paper the
(24:52):
same day, that instantaneous communication, you know, betrayed that process
where they talked with different voices in the two suddenly suddenly,
and that it broke down kind of the system. Yeah, yeah,
and and that that accentuated factional differences between regions north
and south, and that is so. So the argument that
that was made, that has been made before is to
(25:14):
say that were it not for the invention of the telegraph,
it's possible that the Civil War might have been delayed,
maybe to the point where it would have become irrelevant,
because you know, even at the time people realized that
slavery was you know, eventually going to move towards you know, abolition, uh,
and that maybe we would have gotten to that process
without a civil war. So when you talk about counterfactuals,
(25:35):
you know, if Samuel Morse had gotten one painting contract. Uh,
it could have delayed the Civil War by twenty years
and we might still have passenger pigeons flying around North America.
And that's kind of the essence of counterfactual because those
are those are real possibilities. I mean those that I
mean those that there was it was really because of
a political fight with Martin van Buren, right that that
(25:59):
that the reason that Tembuel Morris didn't get that contract.
And that's how fragile history is. That's how how easily
something can change history. So when you talk about the
breath of technology that's in this episode, I mean any
any one of those technologies, you know, the audion tube,
the radio up to television then you know, and the transistor.
(26:21):
Each of those has some process to them, and each
of them a change in that process could have a
radical impact. Even if you delayed the invention of the
transistor by ten years, you know that that could have
significant impact. So, I mean it makes for I kind
of dominated the start in there, because that's kind of
the part I used to talk about what I used
to teach communication history. Really, these technologies are so exciting,
(26:43):
but it occurred in such a dynamic, fast process where
everybody was working on stuff that there's so many variables involved.
You know that it came out the way it came out,
but it could have come out. Then we're often to
the multiverse, which you can express your opinions about the multiverse,
but that's where we are here. You know, Doctor Strange
is now zipping.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
First of all, to one of your twenty of your points.
If you want to envision a world without transistors, actually
it's been done already. A lot of the sci fi
classics from the nineteen fifties assume that there was some
kind of advanced technology, but that advanced technology was relatively stratified,
or it was relatively inaccessible to the common man and
(27:24):
almost treated as a godlike power. So if you look
at some of the classics science fiction, and of course
the title of the movie, which I should know is
eluding me, Robbie the Robot.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Oh that's Forbidden Planet.
Speaker 3 (27:38):
Yeah, yes, Forbidden Planet, the Aliens in yeah, the k
Krell Yeah, yes.
Speaker 2 (27:44):
This movie quite well.
Speaker 3 (27:45):
Walter Pinion, yeah, and Leslie Nielsen yeah yeah. And you
know what is that computer? Well, as I recall, there's
a huge bridge that they have, you know, the yeah, yeah, yeah,
basically there is at least, you know, there's at least
a part of the vision of Okay, so we've got
technology and it's possible to do it, it's going to
(28:07):
take millions, if not billions, of glass tubes, which means
that it's going to be a scarce resource. And so
information manipulation becomes something that is only accessible to the elite.
So what does it get used for? This brings in
an interesting segue too, So what is the first thing
that the transistor really results in?
Speaker 2 (28:28):
That's right, pocket size radio A lot so that a
myth occurs that the transistor was invented in Japan because
the transition radios were coming from Japan. Yeah. Yeah, that's
a fair point. I mean, you know, and that goes
to that line that says, you know, we have the
all of all of human history now to touch, and
(28:48):
we used to mostly to look at videos of cats.
I mean it's true, I mean, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Another thing really fascinated about fascinating me about this topic
was there are so many there's there's a whole lot
of rabbit, but there's some that if you look at Okay,
let's focus it down a little bit. I would say
that an interesting counterfactual. What if the transistor is looked
at at Bell laboratories and it takes them a little
bit longer to figure out that germanium is not the way,
(29:15):
but that really you need to go to silicon. And
so the transistors we know it is not invented for
say three to five years. So what's happening at the
time that you know they're just about ready to make
the commercially viable transistor?
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Two things?
Speaker 3 (29:32):
Number one the Cold War? Number two, the Space race program.
What if, for three years during the fifties and sixties,
when nuclear deterrence was the only real tool the West
had against the Soviets, if that was somewhat retarded from
(29:52):
what it actually was, does that mean that the Soviet
Union gains even more influence and just or another spanner
into the works? What happens if the Japanese economic miracle
of the fifties and sixties is slowed down Because a
good portion of what is happening there is various electronic
(30:13):
firms that are really fueling an economic boom in Japan.
Now there was a lot more to that, as well
as the auto industry, which, by the way, that would
be a wonderful topic as well. Yeah, long and short
of it is is that, you know, it's possible that
the Korean War doesn't end when it does and Japan.
(30:34):
Japan's economy is fairly strong, but maybe it's not quite
as stable. The American forces are seen as occupiers, and
you get a homegrown communist party in the Japanese Ales
that decides that, hey, the West is not the way
to go, and they look at the Soviets, and then
(30:54):
to top it all off, the Soviets launched Sputnik. That's
proving the inferior already a Western technology.
Speaker 2 (31:01):
Yeah, well, you know, what if the transistors invented in Russia?
What the what if they get there first.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
I'm not exactly sure what the state of Russian transistor
research was at the time, but it certainly isn't isn't
out of the question.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Yeah, there were certainly other groups that were very close
to the transistor before you well, and I mean, but
also you could say about the transistor though it probably
would have been invented four years earlier, except it was
interrupted by the Second World War. There's lots of ways
that this could change. What if they had made that
breakthrough before the Second World War? What would that meant
about the technology in the Second World War? And we
did use we use the analog computers and computers in
(31:35):
some extraordinary ways in the Second World War. So imagine
if we had had you know, transistor capability before that,
how would that have made.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
You know, And technology was such an important part of
course it is in warfare. But like radar, if the
radar coming at the time, it did absolutely altered the
situation for the British and that's that's a that's a system.
Then it shows you how important it is that something
happens when it did, and how different something could be
if it happened you know, before or after.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
Well, then we managed to put radar inside of shells
and the proximity views and that that was critical in
certain battles in the Pacific, and that was great. It
was used actually the entire o toning shells in the
bulge at Elson Borne Ridge. And so I mean, yeah,
you're right. I mean there were key technologies that came
at the right time. Would those have come differently? You know,
so we've kind of backed up brad things and whether
(32:24):
the transistor come earlier, how that have changed technology of
the Second World War, what have it come later? How
that changed technology in the Korean War? Obviously it's a
very critical piece of technology. So it's it's a little
hard because I've tried to research and literally say, you like,
what diseases have we cured because of computers? And it's
easy to find lots of stuff talking about you know,
computers have changed medicine and electronic record keeping in et cetera.
(32:48):
It's a little harder to pin down we would never
have identified this illness in this cure if it weren't
for computers. Though intuitively, medical advances of the last fifty
years would be much slowed if we didn't have computers.
It's kind of hard to It's kind of hard to
pinpoint exactly. You know, it would be a lot harder
to run our street lights if we if we hadn't
had you know, the transits. Yeah, that's society, right.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
Yeah, that makes you yeah, that we relied so much
on that kind of stuff. I mean, computers control uh
city street light grids, and we have done a lot
of research on how to i mean, how to make
that work. And I mean it would we be talking about,
you know, you would be unable to essentially function in
some of these megacities that we have without without the
(33:33):
efficiency that we gain from that stuff.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
I mean that's possible. New York City was operating street
lights ahead of the computer, ahead of the So I
mean about how much different would it be? I mean
it would be like a steampunky world. I mean, yeah,
be transistors together somewhere.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
Again, turn to science fiction. Yes, it would be very
much a steampunk or diesel punk type universe, where again
information information manipulation is central to human existence, to the
point where you have abakai I believe should be the
plural of abicus or.
Speaker 2 (34:10):
What is the plural of abacus? It is never That
is a question that has never This might be the
first time those words have ever come out in a podcast.
You should bring a ball every time we do that.
Say something that has never before been put on air.
Go ahead, go ahead, I've got a challenge. Point. I'm
(34:31):
bad to google what is the plural abicus while you're
doing that?
Speaker 3 (34:34):
Okay, yes, yes, use your transistor.
Speaker 2 (34:39):
We will to have Google were it not for the.
Speaker 3 (34:45):
Yeah, no, and yeah. This thing about information manipulation is
you know, this is from this is from perspective of
thirty years in it. Ah, you cannot imagine how every
single aspect of your life is impacted by technology large
because it's become so abiquitous, ubiquitous that it's almost visible.
(35:08):
What diseases we were quote cured about the transistor anything
from about nineteen sixty one on was certainly impacted. From
about sixty five on would probably be you know, a
seventy percent chance it isn't cure.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
I mean with that quickly we found you know that
Manipula covid had just come out within a month we
had its genome. Obviously that would never have been possible. Yeah,
that could be so so you know, by the way,
according to Google, according to Wikipedia, since we're going to
use our our most credible sources, uh, both abacuses and
abacai are used as plurals.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
So that there are people who think that who have
had so many that they they have considered the question
for those very few of us still have.
Speaker 2 (35:57):
An abacus anymore. But if we have multiple abba kai,
we have we have asked that question before.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
I don't have one in my house, but I have
considered buying one because I have a two year old
and there are a lot of toy abbot Kai that
they target towards.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
That age group.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
So that's that's about where we're where the abocists have gone.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:22):
Yeah, oh, and here's another thing here, here's something one
just occurred to me. It's much like you know, the
automotive industry made the buggy whip the thing in the past.
Who's seen a slide rule reside?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
I don't know if I can operate one.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
How many of our listeners know what a slide rule is?
Probably if you're younger than about fifty.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
I was gonna say, I don't know if I've ever
actually seen one. Okay, I know what it is, but
I don't think i've I don't think I've ever used one.
Speaker 2 (36:50):
I've messed around with one, but I don't think I could.
Probably i'd try. I could figure it out. Yeah, you know,
we've all seen We've seen videos of people like Josh
trying to bright a rotary phone, and it's always it's
always comic. Yeah to see, uh.
Speaker 1 (37:06):
See, I could. I could operate a rotary phone, but
my I had grandparents who had a rotary phone in
their house until Gosha might still be there. I don't know,
so I could technically operate a rotary phone, but it
might take me a second after.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
I mean the number the number of things I mean,
would you, I mean, would you know how to operate
a manual door handle on a car door? Would you
look at a thing like, what on earth is that? Well?
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Sometimes I think though that my first car had a
still had roll up windows, you know where you actually
and and I wonder if maybe we shouldn't go back
to that, because at least then because in our cars today,
which in talking about transistors, they rely so completely onto
transistors that like literally almost nothing in them good of
(37:51):
it could exist without it. I mean, gosh, the ignition
is run by transistors these days.
Speaker 2 (37:56):
You know, there's no the entire the entire entire engine
is op it by computer. Now is it regulated by computer?
Speaker 1 (38:02):
There's none of that could none of that could exist.
But one little thing goes wrong with it. You know,
these complex systems where it's exposed to the weather, and
essentially you get one weakness in your electrical system and
half your car will go out. And I mean we're
at a point now where gosh, that can happen in
your car.
Speaker 2 (38:18):
Just won't start?
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah, you can't turn the window.
Speaker 2 (38:24):
All the volts reagons was because just because of a
computer issue that had to do with the regulation life.
You're a great grandma. You never knew Helen, but she
she had. When she died, we inherited a Cadillac El Dorado.
That was a tank. I mean it was. It was
seventy five feet. It was not the white green one.
It was white with a red interior. It was. But anyway,
(38:44):
the electrics had gone back. Water had gotten in there somehow,
and occasionally the seat would just suddenly buy itself move
you all the way forward. There's a lot of seat
adjustment on the Cadillac El Dorado. And when it's doing that,
you know, against your will, that's that's quite a quite
a deal. And I mean that was you know, that
was then. I mean, yes, today, you're right, so I
mean we could. You know, we're used to keyless entry now.
(39:04):
The vast majority of the population, I think is used
to starting a car without a key now. I mean,
I think there's more computational power in your key chain
now than there was to send people to the moon. Yeah,
we did so on very low computational power, and that
shows how powerful you know, transistors were because we could
have gone to the moon on e Fuesdays.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Actually I think that we could have, but that would
have been one of those on the one of the
points I was making earlier, where if you had access
to a computer, it was because you were part of
the elite, either as something like NASA obviously, someone high
in government, or someone in a very very large military
or bureaucratic type program that's designed for science. National Weather Service,
(39:48):
you know, they would probably have multi story, multi block
computer bunkers that they would use to try to figure
out whether we're going to get snow next Tuesday or not.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Well, we were pretty well on technology and the Weather Service, actually,
because we've done some episodes on that too. Yeah, it's
kind of amazing how what little they had for technology
until fairly recently.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
Yeah, that you know, you mentioned the difficulty. One of
the big difficulties in terms of going to space is
that you're so limited on space inside your little module.
I mean, you can't you don't have the room to have,
you know, twenty thousand vacuum tubes and that's and so
the more power you need, the less space you have
to fit a person in there, and so and so
(40:29):
we I was looking at some of that where it's
it certainly comes down to if we were going to have,
you know, people go to space like that, we were
going to have to have either remarkable mechanical computers or
essentially there's there's going to be someone down you know,
on Earth telling them to doing all the calculations there
(40:50):
and then telling them to you know, do manual stuff.
And I think that what that ultimately means is that
we would have spent much of our time dealing with
that issue, dealing with the issue that we couldn't manageurize
the technology, and that would have been where a lot
of our.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Just as someone who's had old enough to have had
a TV that had tubes and I can't imagine and
the Apollo program didn't use me. I mean, it had
actual integrated circles, but I can't imagine that it's going
to survive blast off shoot. That thing couldn't survive a
sonic boom. Yeah, if you had a TV with tubes
in it, you know what I mean, the back was
always off of that with someone in there pulling tubes
in and out of the thing. So I can't imagine
(41:24):
trusting your life on that going to the Moon, because
you know, you shake it, the tube breaks, right, I
mean the audio tubes were not going to make it fast.
I think it would have been we would not have
any of the space technology. But there's no way we
could put up say, satellites for global positioning or anything
like that that we're running on tubes and we would
have to have an awful lot of space ships to
(41:45):
go up there, you know, to have you know, some
guy with a tool belt opened up the back of
the satellite and replace the tubes and it burned out.
I mean again, it's like it's like brad are this
stuff is invisible. We use it so much, it's so
critical to us now. I mean it's it's funny because
I remember or you know, when you got the ability
to go print, you know, to to electronically see where
(42:06):
you were going to go and print a map, and
he carried that paper with you. And that was a
huge shift because before that you just had sort of
the atlas. Yeah, atlas had to date, but you had
you had to find what you were looking for on
the atlas. I mean, you know, so so and then
and then I had I actually had a garment. Remember
we bought a computer just to do what your cell
phone does now, and that thing was you know, it
(42:26):
changed our life and stuff like that. I mean all
that were so dependent upon now, so we can ask
you if there's a big EMP polls and people's computers
stopped working, I mean, not only could your car run,
but I mean what percentage of the population could not
find their way to the local grocery store without the
automatic systems that we have to navigate.
Speaker 3 (42:47):
Now, if the EMP hits anyone who is a classic
car collector and has a car from say previous to
like nineteen seventy five, it's all of these yeah, yeah,
I mean the sixty seven Mustang that'll that'll get you
over to the store. Now, there won't be anything in
the store.
Speaker 1 (43:04):
And then we can't well because they can't they can't
carry anything.
Speaker 2 (43:08):
They won't be able to take your money. Yeah, and
then you won't be able to get gas because the
gas pumps are.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
All even inventorying what they need would be impossible. Now,
you know, that's all computers that's with with hundreds of
millions or billions.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
Of we did. We did an episode on bark Outs
and how much I say, I mean, I remember old
enough to say, when someone's out there and they punch
the price into a cash register on every item that
went through, you know, you can of soup and everything. Yeah,
chicken chen. Yeah. If we lose power, can we can
we run? You know anything? We've become so dependent upon it.
(43:44):
That's and that's the typical stuff when you talk about,
like a counterfact, what if what if today we lost
computers today? But it's a different question to say what
if we never had them? Though? You know, one possibility
is an integrated circuit is not the only potential way
for you to sort information in a computer like way.
So today they're talking about quantum computers, which are going
(44:04):
to have a fairly narrow rule. But a quantum computer
doesn't use an integrated chip. It's possible if for some
reason we hadn't invented something, that we would have come
up with a different solution that our computers. We would
have computers. You could have computers without transit. We had
computers before transistors. Matter of fact, we had computers before
we had audion tubes right where they're just mechanical. So
(44:26):
I mean, it's possible that we would have come up
with some other means of transmitting communication and the same
thing that computers do without the transistor. Tesla's idea of
radio was going to be he was used the Earth
as a ground and he was going to transmit electricity
via radio waves. That was his idea. That's very different
than Marconi says we're going to send messages with some
(44:47):
Morse code via radio waves. So if we had really
embraced Tesla's idea, we might not have had communication as soon,
but we might actually power the world via big t
New Jersey, right, you know.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
And and yeah, because these are the basis of so
many technologies. It's it's sometimes a little difficult to envision
what the world could look like. But we're literally talking
about if you change this foundational piece, it could have
altered and the entire course of how technology developed. And
it's it's I mean, it's difficult, of course to imagine
(45:22):
exactly how those steps would have happened, but people do
all the time, Like like Brad said, with science fiction
in the it's a television show now, but it also
has been a video game fallout. I don't think they
have transistors because you're still picking up vacuum tubes in
the in the games. So they have computers, but they're
like much more rudimentary. So it's it's set in the future,
(45:42):
but these are computers that are running on ms DOS.
And one of the things that they did a lot
more of is that that they relied on nuclear power.
If you don't have computers that people are going to
have inside their homes and stuff like that, you have
people who are not as reliant on technology, more manual stuff.
And I mean, we could be in a place where
I think we would exist today, but it's interesting to
(46:04):
see how we would have existed differently. As someone is
listening to this podcast right now, the number of transistors
that have gone into making it function. I mean, it's
wild trying to trying to put that into you know,
vacuum tube.
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Yeah, we wouldn't have personal computers. It's when PC one
came out. Gates said, uh uh that no one, no
one at home. Well, every need more computing power than
PC one. There's nothing you would do at home with
it that would require And we've we've really altered the
idea of what it is you can do on a computer. Yeah,
we have that. What we did we completely changed, you know,
(46:38):
he thought apparently you're going to do your you know,
your quick books. Imagine though, that if we had a
world where we had lots of nuclear power plants and
they're not regulated by computers. Okay, it's all depended upon
someone checking boxes and doing their maths.
Speaker 3 (46:51):
Life posibility instead of electron computers. What if light had
been used for computing, Because I think about it, you
can mechanically move a prism to indicate a one or
zero on a particular location. Eventually someone gets bright and
figures out that, hey, there's this thing called fiber optics.
(47:12):
I would say that that there comes a problem with that,
of course, is that you can only get fiber optics
so small using current technology. However, if that was the
technology path that we took in our grand vision of six,
do we figure out a way to make monomolecular fiber
(47:33):
optics and thereby keep things going smaller and smaller so
that we would have something similar to a Moore's.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Law, because that miniaturization is vital in terms of almost
anything we've got today, gosh, and in terms of anything we've
had in the last fifty sixty years.
Speaker 2 (47:49):
And size impact speed too greater distance that the slower
speed's going to because even limited by speed of light.
Speaker 1 (47:56):
Of course, vacuum tubes did. I mean, we did make
smaller device is, but they're going to be limited at
some point. I don't think we can make a vacuum
tube on like the nanoscale the way we're doing transistors.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
Yeah, I mean, how big can the vacuum be? So
And there's probably some people that are real tech minded
computer people whose heads are exploding with what we're talking
about here, but I mean it's very safe to say
that that there are multiple theories out there about different
ways that we could have done computing than the mechanical
computing that we do today. And one of the reasons
why this topic is so interesting is a counterfactual is
(48:31):
some of those might have come more slowly but might
have had much more potential, right. I mean, the thing
is Marconi's stuff could be it could be monetized right away,
and Tesla's could not. I mean, if we had moved
more slowly, it might have been moved towards a more
robust technology over the long run. So I mean, we
might have much more computing power if we initially moved
(48:52):
to quantum computing, which they're talking about now, and thinking
are you know it is going to come you know,
in the twenty thirty range. If we had moved to
some version of that that allowed computing without the integrated circuit,
it might have been you know, more years before we
had computers, but when they came out, they might have
been more capable. And then you also get, you know,
the rudimentary technology. You build your computer programs for that
(49:13):
rudimentary technology, and then you have to make everything backwards compatible,
and that slows the entire process down. So if we
were if we were to right now, say let's pick
a computer technology that that that we're going to you know,
we're going to start right now and use this as
the one that has the most long term potential, it
might not be the integrated circuit. When you talk about
(49:34):
the counterfactuals here, it really makes for an exciting time
because it's not just you know, what would happen if
we didn't have computers, which is a question I think
lots of people ask. A matter of fact, if you go,
you know, on YouTube, there's plenty of people who just
like tried to live in a cabin for a month
and completely disconnect, and mostly they you know, they go
crazy and most of them are still there's things that
they're doing in life that are regulated by computer elsewhere
(49:56):
and unless they're really you know, not going outside in
their cabin. But there's a broader question to say, what
if any of these technology trees, I guess we were
talking about, you know, video games, you know, the tech
trees that you pick as you go along. A different
choice in any spot could lead to a very very
different world as well as what if that choice was
invented somewhere else or by someone else. You know, what
(50:20):
if you know, they were someone that was more enforcing
their patents or someone who was for some reason keeping
the secret for their government reasons.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Yeah, what if? What if the transistor is invented in
nineteen thirty nine by a guy named Bauer in southern Bavaria,
right before that little dust up from thirty nine to
forty five starts.
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Rather important period.
Speaker 3 (50:44):
So you know, there's something I think that if the
Soviets had invented the transistor, that's kind of an interesting
question because the Soviets throughout the fifties and sixties they
were concentrating on some areas of technology. But I also
think that a very large portion of their time, and
that they were trying to engineer was they were trying
(51:05):
to engineer on the military front, a military that could
reliably take on the West by being larger, with bigger
with bigger guns, bigger booms, bigger tanks. I would say that,
you know, maybe their economy was really being a command economy,
was really focused on military and then basic logistics, because
(51:28):
running the Soviet Union, especially without a technology base, meant
that you had to have a very large bureaucracy to
do things like keep the trains running on time and
make sure that the that the farmers were producing the
amount of weed that that they had been mandated to
and you know, administer the Gulag and all of the
(51:49):
other wonderful things that went on. Now, and that's not
to belittle you know, there was certainly technological achievements in
the Soviet Union. I mean, you know, witness spot mix too.
You know, I just don't see I don't ever see
the Soviet Union saying our priority is to facilitate communications
between individuals.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
Yeah, when I mean it was invented at Bow Laboratories. Yeah,
it was, so It's it's immediate application was obvious. But
I mean, if it had been invented in you know,
something military industrial complex. You know, maybe it wouldn't have
been maybe it would have been used in a very
different way, or it would have come to the public
much more slowly.
Speaker 3 (52:28):
Yeah, there's also the dark side of technology that we
have discussed, and that is, you know what, if the
transistor doesn't come around for another five or ten years,
are we relatively more free or not?
Speaker 2 (52:40):
True?
Speaker 3 (52:41):
Because you know, it's as I said, as I alluded to,
it's you know, we're surrounded by technology and we are
literally being looked upon by bits and bytes.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
Yeah, there's lots of people arguing that screens are unhealthy
and it's not necessarily not as well. So maybe, you know,
maybe the integrated circuit is is a burden as much
as an advantage. I don't know. Again, when you try
to look from the medical perspective, IWAD just try to
really research, really ask who would be dead if we
didn't have computers? And it's easy to find lots of
people talking about how, you know, what computers you know,
(53:14):
change medicine or electronic medical records or whatever. But to
really get to we could not have solved this problem
if we didn't have computers, it's kind of hard hard
to get to. It's not easy to say that the
integrated circuit has been all good stuff. Some people think
that society, humanity is less than it was, you know,
fifty years ago, when we weren't so dependent upon.
Speaker 1 (53:39):
It's I mean, I understand that perspective very much because
because it's easy to you know, we can list things
that have happened that are good, it's in some ways
more difficult to talk about in what ways it has
impacted us negatively. In other ways, I think there are
some very obvious ways that it has. Trying to kind
of envision a world where we're really talking about even
(54:02):
not necessarily and not just saying, oh, there's no computers,
but we're talking about a world that has simply approached
problems differently. You talk about kind of ways that our
abilities kind of impact our culture. If we had to
approach these problems in a different way than we did. Certainly,
certainly we have we have been impacted by our technology,
(54:22):
and if that technology worked out differently, I think we
might have of just a very different world in terms
of how we even think about the world.
Speaker 2 (54:31):
Our brains.
Speaker 1 (54:32):
We think about the world very clearly is from the
way our technology is our brain structure. In that way,
it's true, and our problem solution pattern is all developed
around the same sort of logic that a computer uses.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
And yeah, absolutely we would be a different people we are.
Our technology is part of who we are aside from
so I meanoot, we were able to google the plural
of abacai. I mean that's kind of how you know,
how much do we carry in our head today? Are
not carry it our head today because we can carry
it in our cell phone or we can get it
from Google. That's you know, in some ways that's a
(55:05):
great thing. It frames your brain to do lots of
other things. But in some things that's you know, your
you are not exercising muscles that we either depending on
your perspective, were given by God or you know, developed
through evolution for some reason. And now those you know,
those are those are not being exercised. And you know
what's that going to constant?
Speaker 3 (55:23):
Yeah, now here's something without transistors. In our world in
which the tech tree does not have transistors, at least
for a few years, TV does not develop, at least
not as quickly as it did. Because television, it is
possible to do television and transmission with tubes, but is
tremendously expensive and you have all the problems with tubes transistors. Yeah,
(55:47):
I've been able to miniaturization. Yeah, but a lot of
the but transistors were working their way into those TVs
in the sixties and the seventies, and slowly, you know,
the size of the TVs came down, the quality the
picture greased.
Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah, it's still I mean, we still have big, fat,
expensive TVs. I like the one that had a turntable
on one side and a wet bar on the other
in the middle of the sign that was if you
had that, that was the high end television. In the
back of the TV came off for all the tubes
that were in there. Yeah, So, I mean it's true.
Speaker 1 (56:24):
It does make me wonder how how it might impact
that and how that would impact like our pop culture too,
just because of if you know what's I mean, if
if TVs are are are more expensive or less accessible
or that kind of thing.
Speaker 2 (56:37):
If radios are still the size of a you know,
of a cabinet, I mean, that's that that changes, that
absolutely changes our popular culture. And now we see popular culture,
but quite a lot of our music today is actually
requires integrated circuits.
Speaker 1 (56:51):
Oh gosh, yeah, I guitar effect pedals and synthesizers, and I.
Speaker 2 (56:58):
Think probably the bulk of instruments they used their not
acoustic instruments anymore, right, and that they were at least
I mean we had again we had we had electric
guitars before we had integrated circuits. But I mean, if
if the way that we're able to use those today,
because we don't have to have that big box full
of tubes in order to amplify, I mean, it's you know,
of course, it would dramatically impact. So I mean it
(57:21):
would be something like, yeah, fallouts or you know, we'd
be looking at little screens and we obviously wouldn't be
doing what we're doing right, Yeah, I mean we could
have this conversation out back over the fire.
Speaker 1 (57:33):
Yes, we would not be putting it on the internet
for everybody to or or the internet would be a
very different place, that's at the very end, or.
Speaker 3 (57:42):
We would be we would all be sitting, uh, sitting
in front of a computer that I'm looking over Josh's
from my perspective left shoulder, uh, with a CRT tube
with a relatively non sophisticated more or less grandiose telephone,
(58:02):
i e. The Dick Tracy basically the Dick Tracy not
quite risk risk telephone, but yes, something that's far less,
something far less capable, powered by twos which have miniaturized
over time, just because well, necessity is the mother of
invention and the constant drive to go smaller and more productive.
(58:24):
Another thing about not having transistors, or having transistors invented
a few years later, or being adopted a few years later,
I think that you also have massive economic impacts because
so much of our economy is based upon things like
just in time, just in time, supply chains. One of
(58:47):
the things that frustrates me to know in being a
board gamer is that oftentimes I'm waiting for a new
game and it's on a boat from China has been
delayed for for whatever reasons.
Speaker 2 (59:01):
Yeah, whole economies like you're talking about Japan that became
very major players in economies might not I mean they
did that on electronics, It might not have if it weren't.
So you've got countries that are resource poor but technology rich.
Would that have happened or could that have happened in
the same way if we hadn't had the integrated circuit.
I mean, remember this is statistic for me, think the
most manufactured item in human history are or integrated circuits
(59:26):
or computer and chips. So I mean that there's there's
a huge amount of money there. That means a huge
amount of economy there, and you know, the whole economies
have spun on those, uh and those you know, so
different players would be important in the world economy and
different oh different imagine different materials.
Speaker 3 (59:43):
Can you imagine being Taiwanese in a world without transistors? Yeah,
there literally is an island that is built on.
Speaker 2 (59:53):
Yeah, that's there. They're there.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
They rely on that just just a little bit.
Speaker 2 (59:58):
And that's and it is.
Speaker 1 (59:59):
You know, if if someone else invented it, or if
when it was invented it was simply more opportune time
for things like financing or something like that. In a
different location, I mean, you could see Japan not be
the king of these these technologies and someone else be
and that certainly would alter very much, very much the world.
I mean, any country that you know could become essentially
(01:00:21):
the Japan of of that multiverse certainly alters you know,
how we how we see all kinds of things. Well,
I'm sure what kinds of technologies and stuff come out
of it.
Speaker 2 (01:00:31):
And we talk about it shifting east west, but also
could have shifted north south. You know. So the thing
the places that are you know, wealthy elitist nations now
might not have been so much and you know it
could have been. And you know, if you had a
world without computers, that might really you know, empower say Africa,
(01:00:51):
which has lots of raw materials, and so I mean,
you know, assuming that you know, whatever, Wakanda didn't show
up with their vibranium or something, it's possible because we
have countries now that are resource rich but are still
economically povar and that that might be less possible if
there wasn't the technological difference that comes from integrated circuits.
Speaker 3 (01:01:14):
Yeah, as some examples, even though it's not quite nor South,
a lot of the countries in the world that are
the most have the easiest access to the best quality internet.
At least some of those are former Eastern Bloc countries
because they literally had to rip out all of the
old infrastructure, and when they rebuilt, instead of putting in
(01:01:36):
those pesky mechanical phone lines, they just put up cell towers.
Speaker 2 (01:01:41):
So they made the jump.
Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Well, that's and that's a little bit of a bit
of that backwards compatibility kind of thing, right, is that
they didn't have to, you know, rely on upgrading constantly.
Speaker 3 (01:01:52):
Yeah, and it's certainly a distraction, you know. Okay, so
you know, how are we going to make sure that's
my mom who insists on keeping her it's at least
a touchdown the phone, so but her landline and you
know I still have one. But boy, if the thing rang,
I wouldn't know what to do. That's kind of kind
(01:02:16):
of a segue back. Here's a thought, and that is okay,
so what does the world look like if transistors are
for whatever reason, never invented or we start pursuing a
technology that just takes oh they.
Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
Just don't work. I mean what if it didn't have
What are the physics if it didn't work? Is it
to prever to figure out what would be a world
like without transistors? It's an interesting question because would we
have done the same thing using some other method, or
would we be living in like you know, the video game,
you know, where we have certain limits and the things that.
Speaker 3 (01:02:48):
We have look like there's you know, at a phone out.
So why don't we. Uh, Okay, let's focus a little
more on that. When was the last time that the
world was functionally largely without transistors? Nineteen fifties? Yeah, okay,
So now let's imagine that certain things get better from
the nineteen fifties, and you know, humans, being the clever
(01:03:11):
monkeys that we are, our put our minds to it
and create some new tools, and we end up with
a say, a steam punky and maybe not steampunky, perhaps
diesel punk or no steampunk works, certainly not cyberk.
Speaker 1 (01:03:27):
They were gonna cyberpunk by by a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
Yeah yeah, so okay, so steampunk. So we do have
steam trains that will easily take us across the nation,
and just by trial and error, they've become more efficient,
so regular regular train routes, okay, no problem. Aircraft obviously,
we get they had that.
Speaker 2 (01:03:48):
It's it's called Europe.
Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
Yeah there, yeah, it's already yeah yeah, so all centers
of all centers of technology again are they're used, but
by a very limited group of people.
Speaker 2 (01:04:03):
Now.
Speaker 3 (01:04:03):
One of the sci fi settings that I think of
where this was actually proposed was Frank Herbert's Doom.
Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Yeah, because they have the whole that no, no robots,
no AI, all that stuff not to get into Dune.
Speaker 2 (01:04:20):
Into computers were all human computers, right, and the navigators
had to were dependent upon some sort of.
Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
Narcotic So what do we have with that? What we
have is a population that, instead of being hyper specialized
the way that we are now, we tend towards more
jack trades. Perhaps, so the average person has to have
at least a passing knowledge of you know, the way
that the hypothetical steam iaines that we're talking about working
(01:04:48):
and the manipulation of data for the manipulation of data's sake,
i e. Advertising is limited in certain ways, you know,
based upon the systems that you actually have access to.
I think that if we follow that logically, we end
up in a world that certainly is you know, you'll
get well beyond the fifties and sixties. But I do
(01:05:11):
think that what you'll have is you'll have a far
higher focus on individuals who are not quite as hyper
specialized as we are now. Depending on the social critic,
there are a lot of people who feel that hyper
specialization of the species will be the death of all mankind.
To specialization is just the way humans develop and I've
(01:05:33):
seen convincing arguments for both. What does that you know,
what does that lead us to? We could add a
we get add a moral element to it and say
is it a better or a less better world? Better
or worse? Or do we just focus on Okay, it's.
Speaker 2 (01:05:47):
Different, it's different.
Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Yeah, better, worse is always is always hard, especially because
I mean, certainly it's going to have some pieces I
think will be unambiguously better, in others maybe unambiguously worse,
but certainly, I mean we talk about having like if
the world ended, how many of us would know how
to build a car? Well, if the world ended, how
many of us could build an integrated circuit is perhaps
(01:06:12):
a different question, and that hyper specialization. But if you
were in a place where you know, for instance, with
cars pre nineteen seventies, most people did have some knowledge
of you know, the carburetors and all these various pieces
of how a car worked because you needed to in
order to you know, reliably drive your car. If we
were in a place where we were able to do that, maybe,
(01:06:33):
you know, in some ways we're more resilient as a society,
and certainly in the face of something like that, we
are in the technologically technological world we live in today,
somewhat vulnerable to say, at massive emp I don't know
how likely that is, but certainly everything in our life
(01:06:54):
runs on that. We would be surprised. And I catch
myself doing that. If the power goes out, I'm like, oh, well,
let's go do this. I'm like, no, it can't do that.
That relies on power, and that's you know, that's not
even talking about integrated circuits, which when you go that far,
I mean stuff, you would you would be surprised by
some of the things have to rely on that. So
(01:07:14):
if you were in a place where you know you
have you kind of have to have to know more.
You have rudimentary knowledge of how a steam engine works,
which I think we could say most people don't today,
and we certainly have less idea of how our engine
works in terms of all the computer things that are
managing it. That's a very very different world.
Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
Yeah, if we were all dependent upon steam bunkie, I
don't know, mex or whatever we were walking around, and
since we've changed to this world, we would all probably
have different You'd have to have mechanical skills, yeah, to
go alone, but there might be very specialized people who
essentially were human computers. But if you want a model
for what would be if we didn't invent any of
this technology, I think it is important to mention that
(01:07:55):
Sasquatch has managed to survive its entire species length without
the integrated circuit. Well, we we assume maybe maybe they have,
you know, maybe they have mastered the integrated circuit so
long before us that they have they have simply evolved
beyond the need for such mundane mundane technologies.
Speaker 3 (01:08:16):
Actually, actually the question is if you went back to
the Sasquatch layer, would there be a high five system
and eighty five inch eight K TV A PS five.
Speaker 2 (01:08:30):
I think I think they're just excellent. With men in
a world without integrated circuits, then we might be ruled
by Sasquatch.
Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
I get that it would be personally. I think that's
probably more likely. Yeah, because they've they've got all their
they've they've got survival down they do, and we, we
we soft humans, not so much.
Speaker 2 (01:08:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:08:49):
Well, they're clearly stronger and far more wily than we are.
In fact, it's possible that Sasquatch are in fact super genius. Yeah,
And the reason that they're so elusive is because they're
trying to avoid they're trying to avoid getting bit by
a potentially rabid monkey boy.
Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
They maybe they have a prime directive and they're trying
not to interfere with our development.
Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
If you really want a bit of Sasquatch history, Sasquatch
was brought here by the aliens and was their agent
in the six million Dollar Man, who of course would
not be possible without integrated circuits, but he might be
kind of funny if he was a vacuum tube. So
we've got a.
Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
Vacuum Unfortunately, after inflation, it's the six billion dollar Man.
Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
He would have cost a whole lot more. Uh. If
and all you can to do is break his tube,
you know, he'd be like, I have biotic ar I'm
to pull your tube out. There we go. We spelled
the whole thing, Yes, in that show which was which
was a wonderful show. Uh. The Sasquatch was actually a
robot that was by aliens. Were the Martians, I don't
remember what they were, but they were. Yeah, because the
(01:09:56):
venus problem now went to Venus, and they didn't go
to Venus, ended up in California or something. But yeah,
So but I don't know where the alien I don't
remember where the aliens that made sasquatches from. Assuming, so
that we don't wander into the ridiculous, Assuming got just normal,
A normal Canadian sasquatch.
Speaker 1 (01:10:17):
That we can all about.
Speaker 2 (01:10:19):
Oh, a Canadian sasquatchy. They provide us the model for
life without integrated circuits. It's all. We don't have to
wander up into the crazy Martian Taskquatch West. With the
mundane run of the mill sasquatch, it still make the.
Speaker 1 (01:10:48):
Thank you for listening to this episode of the History
Guy podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode of counterfactual history,
and if you did, you can find lots more history
if you follow the History Guy on YouTube. You can
also find us at thehistoryguid dot com, Facebook, Patreon, and locals.
If you want to hear more counterfactuals, stay tuned. We
release podcasts every two weeks.