Tubes to transistors to integrated circuits soon to be miniaturized to the molecular level, and all in a century. The rise in complexity has been exponential - we probably all still know someone who listened and tuned a crystal radio set with a whisker of wire on an actual crystal. He probably doesn't own an I-Pod. Just what are the artifacts of this journey?



This early vacuum tube still bears the engraved signature of Lee de Forest (1873-1961) the inventor who changed the world with the radio transmitter. It was the beginning.