137 Years of Solid-state Electronics
Retronics series
You might be surprised to learn that solid-state electronics date back as far as 1874, when in fact Ferdinand Braun invented a solid-state rectifier using a point contact based on lead sulphide. But the chief credit for starting the silicon revolution goes to Greenleaf Pickard of Amesbury, Massachusetts, who discovered that the point contact between a fine metallic wire (the so-called ‘cat’s whisker’) and the surface of certain crystalline materials (notably silicon) could rectify and demodulate high-frequency alternating currents, such as those produced by radio waves in a receiving antenna.
Gerber file
CAM/CAD data for the PCB referred to in this article is available as a Gerber file. Elektor GREEN and GOLD members can exclusively download these files for free as part of their membership. Gerber files allow a PCB to be produced on an appropriate device available locally, or through an online PCB manufacturing service.
Elektor recommends the Elektor PCB Service service from its business partner Eurocircuits or AISLER as the best services for its own prototypes and volume production.
The use of our Gerber files is provided under a modified Creative Commons license. Creative Commons offers authors, scientists, educators and other creatives the freedom to handle their copyright in a more free way without losing their ownership.
Components
The BOM (Bill of Materials) is the technically exhaustive listing of parts and other hardware items used to produce the working and tested prototype of any Elektor Labs project. The BOM file contains deeper information than the Component List published for the same project in Elektor Magazine. If required the BOM gets updated directly by our lab engineers. As a reader, you can download the list here.
Want to learn more about our BOM list? Read the BOM list article for extra information.
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