a guy who helped make our world smaller died last week. As noted within the Long island Times obituary linked below, Norman Krim didn’t invent the transistor , but he was a motive force behind its use, having persuaded his employer, Raytheon, to fabricate them on a massive scale. They were designed to be used in hearings aids initially but, as IEEE Spectrum’s Harry Goldstein explains, some later batches proved too “noisy” for that purpose and wound up within the hands of hobbyists instead, who used them in more than a few electronic projects. Krim was also intent on making things smaller even before the transistor, and led a team at Raytheon within the late 1930s that developed miniaturized vacuum tubes to be used in battery-powered radios. Later in his career, he was also involved the early days of the Radio Shack chain, buying two stores in Boston then expanding to seven before selling the business to the Tandy Corporation. He was 98.
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