• Question: What do you think the greatst invention ever was? Why?

    Asked by mr40052 to Steve on 17 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Steven Gardner

      Steven Gardner answered on 17 Jun 2013:

      There are so many good candidates, but my pick would be something called the transistor, which was invented at the Bell Labs in the USA in 1947.

      A transistor is an electrical device that switches the direction of electrical current. Basically they are what makes computers work. The direction of the current can be used like a piece of information (call a bit). Your computer will be using millions of bits, put together to form bytes, every second to perform the tasks you give it. No computer anywhere could work with without the transistor, in the space of 65 years it has totally changed the world.

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