ABSTRACT
F ew other fields could serve better to illustrate the many-faceted nature of twentieth-century science and its complex inter-relationship with tech-nology than the field of electronics. In a standard dictionary, electronics is defined as "the study, design and use of devices that depend on the conduction of electricity through a vacuum, gas or semicond~ctor."~ The key word in this definition is "devices." The history of electronics is about the development of such devices and the core inventions on which they depended, the electron tube (or valve) and the transistor. Electronics is a prime example of the 'science-based' technologies that characterize modern industrialized society, and its origin and subsequent development has depended on the development of a range of scientific disciplines. However, when it comes to distinguishing the technology part of the history from the scientific, we soon run into trouble. In electronics, science (if we define it as an activity aimed at explaining in theoretical terms the properties of nature) is inextricably linked with technology, when we define this as an organization of knowledge and skills aimed at solving the practical undertakings of mankind. Scientific understanding has sometimes been ahead of, and sometimes lagged behind the technical devices that have been developed. Indeed, electronics can only be explained as the outcome of particular forms of organizing the development of knowledge that exceeds the categories of science and technology.
