Conquering the Electron: The Geniuses, Visionaries, Egomaniacs, and Scoundrels Who Built Our Electronic Age

Conquering the Electron offers readers a true and engaging history of the world of electronics, beginning with the discoveries of static electricity and magnetism and ending with the creation of the smartphone and the iPad. This book shows the interconnection of each advance to the next on the long journey to our modern-day technologies. Exploring the combination of genius, infighting, and luck that powered the creation of today's electronic age, Conquering the Electron debunks the hero worship so often plaguing the stories of great advances. Want to know how AT&T’s Bell Labs developed semiconductor technology—and how its leading scientists almost came to blows in the process? Want to understand how radio and television work—and why RCA drove their inventors to financial ruin and early graves? Conquering the Electron offers these stories and more, presenting each revolutionary technological advance right alongside blow-by-blow personal battles that all too often took place.

Table of Contents:
Part I: Age of Electromagnetism 1 The Knowledge Foundation The Beginning Scientific Method The Magic of Static Electricity The Battery Linking Electricity and Magnetism Faraday, the Grand Master Maxwell, the Peerless Genius 2 The Telegraph Messages Sent by Electric Current Annihilating the Time-Space Barrier Wire Across the Atlantic Intellectual Property Disputes Morse Code Impact 3 The Telephone Voices Carried Over Wire Building the Telephone Business Patent Battle of the Century Sound of Music 4 Wireless Telegraphy Hertz and the Electromagnetic Waves Marconi and the Wireless Crossing the Ocean Blue 5 Lighting and Electrification Electrical Lighting Systems Generators and Motors The AC-DC War Impact of Electrification Edison, Tesla, and Siemens One Hundred Years of Electromagnetism Part II: Age of Vacuum Electronics 6 Current Flow in a Vacuum Cathode Rays The Electron Exposed The Puzzle of Penetrative Light The Legacy of Vacuum Electronics 7 Controlling the Flow of Electrons The Edison Effect The Vacuum Diode The Magical Third Electrode Voices Across the Continent 8 Radio Christmas Eve, 1904 Core Radio Technology RCA and Sarnoff Armstrong’s Tragedy 9 Television Transmitting Video through the Air A Farm Boy from Utah and a Russian Émigré The Intellectual Property Battle 10 Radar Clairvoyance Hunting the Submarine The Most Valuable Luggage Radio Navigation The Microwave World 11 Computer The Calculating Machine ENIAC Foundation of Computer Architecture Framework for the Future Part III: Age of Solid-State Electronics 12 The Semiconductor Bell Labs Kelly’s Foresight The Unpredictable Semiconductor 13 The Birth of the Transistor The Flamboyant Genius Conceptualizing a Solid-State Triode Forging a Better Semiconductor Discovery of the p-n Junction Roadblocks The Great Breakthrough The Roll-Out . . . . . . And the Fight Shockley’s Last Laugh The Zeal of Teal and the Élan of Pfann Resolution 14 Launching the Electronics Industry Sharing Technology New Players The Debut of Silicon The Transistor Radio Japanese Pioneers The Transistor Era Begins 15 The Dawn of Silicon Valley Wall Street Journal or Physical Review? Shockley and the Traitorous Eight The Birth of Venture Capital The Changing of the Guard 16 The Integrated Circuit and the Chip Kilby and the First Integrated Circuit Hoerni and the Planar Process Noyce and the Chip Fairchild and the Silicon Valley Phenomenon 17 Chip Technology Blossoms The Early Market for Chips Moore’s Law Memory Chips Microprocessor—ENIAC on a chip The Personal Computer Unleashed Ubiquitous Silicon 18 Evolution of the Electronics Industry Competitors from Asia Computer-Aided Design The Foundries of Taiwan Noyce, Moore, and Grove Turning Silicon Into Gold 19 LEDs, Fiber Optics, and Liquid Crystal Displays Luminescent Semiconductors Semiconductor Lasers Fiber Optic Communications Liquid Crystal Displays 20 The Information Age and Beyond Putting It All Together The Information Revolution Globalization Looking Ahead Appendix I: Further Reading Appendix II: Summary of Key “Conquerors of the Electron”

About the Author :
Dr. Derek Cheung is a scientist turned businessman with a lifetime of experience in the fields of science and technology. He received his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in the same field from Stanford. Derek spent four years working as a research engineer at Fairchild Semiconductor, the company that gave birth to Silicon Valley, before making a career as president and CEO of Rockwell Scientific, a successful high-tech company transformed from a major corporate R&D lab. He lives in Thousand Oaks, California. Eric Brach is a lecturer in English at West Los Angeles College in Culver City, California. He is the author of Billy “the Hill” and the Jump Hook and has been a contributor to national magazines, newspapers, and academic journals, including Bleacher Report, Box Office, and The Onion. He lives in Culver City, California.

Review :
Best history of electronics ever. Derek Cheung is an outstanding technologist and businessperson, and he gets the technical and business details right. This is a great story of a mighty industry. While I was aware of bits and pieces of the history of the electron, I have never before seen them connected in such a clear and comprehensive manner as in this book. Whether you are just starting to learn about the electron or are a veteran of the electronics industry, you will be enlightened by Conquering the Electron. Conquering the Electron contains an amazing number of little-known facts about the giants who shaped technology and still have an impact today. This book is an interesting read and an inspiration to engineers, entrepreneurs, and young people who aspire to make a difference. It will also provide ample conversation material for any social encounter. This is not an ordinary history book. Conquering the Electron brings deeper insight to the lives and work of those giants who made quantum progress in escalating humans’ understanding and use of electricity. It also reveals the critical meaning of some of the most important (but frequently forgotten or ignored) discoveries and inventions. I firmly believe that my peers and students would benefit equally from reading this well-investigated and composed book in pursuit of their own careers to further advance state-of-the-art electronics. Conquering the Electron is a unique collection of insights into the “visionaries, egomaniacs, and scoundrels,” as well as their related electronic technologies that changed the world in the past two centuries. This is a must-read for technologists, entrepreneurs, tech investors, and business strategists!