Transistor

I think it has to be the Transistor. This one small electrical item, when it was made, made possible a whole new technology. It led to the miniturising of printed circuits, which made it possible to turn a computer the size of a room into a machine you could carry in your hand. There is no field of science that has not been made easier to collect data, store data or to collate and share results, and this has led to more technologies that could not have been thought of without the Transistor being made. Space science was made possible, through the miniturisation of curcuits, Medical science has benifited with all the new machines now being used, Weather forecasting and now Climate change, have all benifited from the huge computing power made possible by the Transistor.

Submitted by: David Kinsella