[XorNot]

Because the world does not work like conspiracy theorists think it does.

Science is never obviously a breakthrough, people like to talk about and get credit for cool stuff they do, and revolutionary technology isn't necessarily of any benefit if no one knows about it.

This is like asking why the US government didn't keep the transistor a secret: because the transistor is of no use to anyone until people made microprocessors with it, and to do that they needed to first make better transistors.

[varjag]

Nitpick: transistors were broadly used before microprocessors and still have thousands of uses that have nothing to do with computers.

[XorNot]

Of course: but the point remains, the transistor by itself wasn't really useful - certainly not the first transistor.

It took the resources and creativity of a nation to figure out what it could do, and to make it cheap enough for its advantages to create revolutionary technology with it: otherwise vacuum tubes "would do" - and did - for a very long time.

A secret program of transistorized electronics would've been of no use at all: since all the advantages came from making them ubiquitous and cheap.

[doubleg72]

"the transistor by itself wasn't really useful"

Not to sound like an ass, and I know it is early yet here on the East coast of the US, but damn this is the most ignorant thing I have read on the internet all day! Not sure what hole you need to have your head up to not realize the impacts of the transistor that don't involve the microprocessor.

[P_I_Staker]

This is harsh, but I agree. It's baffling to me that he doesn't seem to understand this point. WTF.

I've gotten in trouble on hackernews pointing this stuff out, but this is a MASSIVE cultural problem on this site! All these SW nerds just baffled that anything exists outside their universe. (and I'm sw too)

The transistor was such an immediately obviously useful invention, it immediately became the toast of the town AT LEAST a decade before the first microprocessor.

[P_I_Staker]

Vacuum tubes suck, and everyone knew it at the time. The transistor itself was one of the single most intrinsically useful inventions ever.

It seems you have an extremely biased and narrow perspective on technology.

[sidpatil]

> because the transistor is of no use to anyone until people made microprocessors with it

What? That's not true at all. Discrete transistors are absolutely useful in a massive range of analog electronics. Open up any electronic device from the 1970s, and you're likely to find transistors — and unlikely to find microprocessors.

[P_I_Staker]

Tiny radios? You might not care, but back in the day it was the bees knees.

It's always shocking to me how software centric this site is. Everyone here thinks the world revolves around software and electrical engineering didn't exist before, just like it doesn't exist now ;)

Transistor was pretty quickly useful, I think. Integrated circuits took quite a while to catch on. Integrated circuits were available for some time before microprocessors. Microprocessors were arguable available for a long time before they became revolutionary to the average joe.

You could argue that the transistor was a bigger deal than the move to ICs & Microprocessors. You better believe everyone knew how great they were when they got their hands on a radio... it's an iconic moment in technical history.

[XorNot]

"when they got their hands on it".

The transistor was a big deal when people could use it to solve problems. When an ecosystem around it existed.

But it wasn't going to revolutionise anything if it was kept a secret like is being implied with superconductors like the topic title is asking.

I could've been more precise in my language, but the point was that the big revolution of transistorized technology - the game changing stuff - came much further down the line then the original invention.

A small supply of secret transistors wasn't going to give anyone a massive technological advantage.

[P_I_Staker]

>I could've been more precise in my language, but the point was that the big revolution of transistorized technology - the game changing stuff - came much further down the line then the original invention.

This point is really wrong too. It was immediately useful. They could have used the transistors to make unexpected new inventions. There's so many applications, if you were a competent electrical engineer (back then at least), you'd be able to think of many uses.

>A small supply of secret transistors wasn't going to give anyone a massive technological advantage.

That depends on what you're actually holding, and having a handful of microprocessors may not be as useful as you think. Simply owning a few would be of limited utility without computer science, or the developers to make cool stuff. It wouldn't be able to talk to too much. They were doing more than you think with active electronics back then.

You keep barking up the wrong tree. For some background, this is very frustrating, because I've had these discussions repeatedly with "SV types", who can't understand that entire universes of engineering exist outside their comprehension. Meanwhile, fairly minor, poorly adopted tech is something "everyone knows".

People say "it's an SV site" what do you expect? Well, it's also a tech site, and these perspectives are wacky. You can't talk about technology while pretending entire fields don't exist, because they aren't so relevant to you.

[baq]

You can beat roulette with like 12 transistors. In 1961.

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9085523