1961 · Molecular Electronics Amplifier · Work 846 of 1,871
A tiny amplifier circuit on a white test board on a laboratory table in Itami in Japan in late winter, a flat dark rectangular platelet about one centimetre long crossed by two pale bands, along its lower edge a row of four small bright contact spots, from each a thin wire running down at a slant, the wires leading across the board to a small round loudspeaker with a bare pale cone in a plain wooden frame, a microscope with a black tube beside it, a hand in a white coat sleeve holding fine tweezers from the right, sliding paper screens at the window, soft daylight from the left.
What it was used for
What is described is an amplifier from the "molecular electronics" programme on which Westinghouse worked with the US Air Force from 1957. In February 1959 the company submitted the "Proposal for Molecular Electronics: Dendritic Approach" and in April 1959 won a development contract worth $1.6 million, later extended by $2.6 million. In January 1960 Westinghouse presented 8 devices to the Air Force, among them a directly cascaded 5-watt audio amplifier, a two-stage video amplifier and a frequency-selective amplifier with a notch filter in a feedback loop. In 1961 the Westinghouse research group designed a fully integrated 5-watt audio amplifier and built it in pilot production; in 1962 a Molecular Electronics Division was set up.
What was new
What marked it out was the programme, not the device: the Air Force was paying for circuits meant to arise out of the material itself, with no distinguishable individual components. Something else was delivered. Of the 8 devices presented in January 1960, by the account of the trade journal EEJournal only the Peltier cooler was a molecular electronics device as set out in the original proposal; the other 7 were not. John D. Husher's approach from March 1959 led to "Functional Electronic Blocks", which he made by cutting one power transistor die into isolated islands; within a couple of months contract funds were redirected to it.
What the sources leave open: The name "Moleculotron" could not be verified in any source; what is described here is Westinghouse's amplifier from the "molecular electronics" programme. Two sources name a 5-watt audio amplifier: EEJournal in the January 1960 presentation, and Ed Sack's account for the Computer History Museum as a 1961 design and pilot production. Neither says whether the same device is meant.